[lir-wg] Name of the LIR WG

--On 9. januar 2003 12:58 +0000 Matthew Robinson <matthew at crescent.org.uk> 
wrote:

| I think I'm a little concerned that we're in danger of falling into the
| 'Consignia' trap. For those who aren't in the UK, the Post Office here
| decided  that the way forward was to change it's name to Consignia, which
| it did at  huge expense only to realise that it made no difference to
| what the public  thought of it and it's services. I believe it has since
| changed it's name back.
|
| My point I think is that we can change to name to something fantastic but
| if  people don't know what they can discuss then we'll never get new
| people to  join.

While I have quite some sympathy for this particular point of view, I would 
like to point out that the cost of changing the name of the wg is not that 
high.

I have experienced quite some confusion over the years since the split 
between
local-ir at ripe.net (now closed list for local-ir's)
lir-wg at ripe.net (now open list for matters of concern to local-ir's)

now over the last couple of years the wg charter is less "matters of 
concern" to local-ir's and more "open forum for making policy"

whats the harm in reflecting that in the name ?

| Maybe we need a 'Mailing Lists' link on the RIPE website. Currently you
| have  to dig under Working Groups, which I think puts a lot of people off
| joining.  Promoting the working groups as being open and 'hey, come join
| us' is, in my  view, a better use of effort than name changing.

Why not both ?

-hph