RE: tracking pending IANA registrations

> I believe the perceived problems are better be addressed by education of 
> registrants and by making sure that the expert reviewers engage in 
> constructive dialogue.

I think that "education" is completely inadequate as a solution: the problems are as much with the process as they are with the fact that most people don't understand them, education is expensive (where is the budget?), the potential audience immense and the actual need-to-know undiscoverable (anyone who might invent a parameter which "should" be registered but which they don't bother registering), and (more seriously) even those who understand the process well find it inconvenient or inappropriate or even counter-productive to register things. (e.g., me).

Yes, "Expert review" is there for a good reason, and the experts, for the most part, don't do a bad job reviewing, at least when the review criteria are clear. But the infrastructure and processes around expert review fail, expert reviews are lost, registration applications which don't "pass muster" are hidden or opaque.

In the kind of browser wars 2.0 power struggle going on, there is no simple solution, since it is hard to tell the difference between updating a registration value and grabbing someone else's registration. 

Some of this is outlined in the draft-masinter-mime-web-info document, but not enough.

> Having good tools for tracking of states of different registrations is 
> going to help, but I don't think this is the main problem. But I would 
> be happy to assist with this.

I'm trying to be careful to distinguish between "problem" and "proposed solution".  There are a set of problems, and probably there need to be a coordinated set of actions to address the problems.   Having tools to track states of registrations is, at some level, absolutely necessary. By themselves, tools are not sufficient. How good the tools have to be and what else we need to address the problems should continue to be topics for discussion.

I've been thinking about Wikipedia, and how Wikipedia handles updates & conflicts. In fact, I'm wondering not only about using Wikipedia as a model, but actually using it as the registry! For many registered parameters, developers look to Wikipedia anyway, and Wikipedia has a more open and well-developed infrastructure for "expert review".

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net


-----Original Message-----
From: Alexey Melnikov [mailto:alexey.melnikov@isode.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2011 2:31 AM
To: Larry Masinter
Cc: Peter Saint-Andre; Pete Resnick; Noah Mendelsohn; Philippe Le Hégaret
Subject: Re: tracking pending IANA registrations

Hi Larry,

Larry Masinter wrote:

>The W3C TAG discussed the general "registry" issue at our meeting this week. There are some W3C working groups which have been looking for alternatives to IANA because of perceived difficulties with IANA registration processes.
>  
>
I believe the perceived problems are better be addressed by education of 
registrants and by making sure that the expert reviewers engage in 
constructive dialogue.

Expert review process for IANA registries exist for a reason. 
Registrants can't expect to register everything they want and exactly as 
they want it, otherwise what is the point of expert review. I believe 
existing expert reviewers are quite willing to provide early feedback on 
registrations.

Having good tools for tracking of states of different registrations is 
going to help, but I don't think this is the main problem. But I would 
be happy to assist with this.

>I think we need to work to get consensus about the nature of the problems and possible solution space. I don't think this is going to go away. 
>  
>
I agree.

>Larry
>--
>http://larry.masinter.net
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Alexey Melnikov [mailto:alexey.melnikov@isode.com] 
>Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 1:47 AM
>To: Larry Masinter
>Cc: Peter Saint-Andre; Pete Resnick
>Subject: tracking pending IANA registrations
>
>Hi Larry,
>I've added a Management Item to the next IESG telechat, so that IESG and 
>IANA can discuss the issue. I will let you know the results.
>Also some comments below:
>
>Larry Masinter wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I'm wondering whether IANA might use a public tracker (or something 
>>like it) to note pending registrations, reviewer comments, responses, 
>>and to link the registration itself to the comments and replies. The 
>>tracker could point to a mail archive if the responses were in an 
>>archived email list where the archive was maintained as carefully as 
>>the registry itself.
>>
>>    
>>
>I think this would be Ok, as long as this doesn't give a false 
>impression of any approval by IETF/IESG.
>
>I am also wondering if this is actually modifying IANA registration 
>rules for the corresponding IANA registries. If it is, I think this 
>would need another IETF consensus RFC, even if it is a short one. Please 
>let me know if you disagree.
>
>  
>
>>In general, we have situations where registrations don't quite meet 
>>the criteria for the registry but, because the registered values are 
>>already widely deployed, not putting them in the registry seems 
>>counter-productive.
>>
>>These issues apply to MIME types, charset registries, etc., as well as 
>>URI schemes, see
>>
>>http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-masinter-mime-web-info
>>
>>Larry
>>
>>--
>>
>>http://larry.masinter.net
>>    
>>
>>
>  
>


-- 
IETF Application Area Director, <http://www.ietf.org/iesg/members.html>
Internet Messaging Team Lead, <http://www.isode.com>
JID: same as my email address

Received on Monday, 14 February 2011 16:33:03 UTC