Re: [urn] Namespace and Community Considerations ... (in rfc3406bis -02 draft)

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

On 3/25/12 10:15 PM, Alfred � wrote:
> Leslie, thanks for your review and comments. I'll answer the
> various threads separately, slightly shortening the Subject for
> convenience.
> 
> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Following up the editorial notes in the current draft (copied
>> below for ease of reference[*]
> 
> For clarity to other readers on the list: That's in Section 4.4.2
> of the draft, and another, closely related Editorial Note is
> present in Section 4.4.1 of the draft.
> 
>> 
>> First, to the question of the bulleted lists:  these were merely 
>> suggestions of dimensions in which a proposed namespace might
>> differ from existing namespaces of similar syntactic structure.
>> 
>> These 2 sections ("namespace" and "community" considerations)
>> were meant to address the basic questions of "why do you need a
>> new namespace anyway?" and "is your audience broad enough that
>> this merits an Internet-wide identifier scheme?".
> 
> Yes.
> 
> And every now and then, it's properties of the interested
> community that impact the need for a new namespace; so registration
> documents have been seen to need to explain the community aspects
> first in order to discuss the first question.
> 
>> 
>> Mostly what I've seen is that registrants don't understand the 
>> questions, and first drafts often don't particularly address
>> those questions.   [...]
> 
> That matches my observations.
> 
>> [...]  That some of the registrations may duplicate text between 
>> their answers in each section is, I think, more a function of
>> that than a reason to conflate the 2 into one section.
> 
> Maybe the situation is different for already well-established
> (e.g. standards-based) "foreign" namespaces seeking integration
> into the URN framework vs. for newly conceived conceptional
> namespaces that are looking for the "proper" way to address the
> needs of their community.

In my experience as sponsoring AD for several NID registrations, I
would say most of them are new. So the text in several places about
"existing" namespaces needs to be adjusted -- that is not the norm.

>> Perhaps a better path would be to more clearly articulate the 
>> question/section requirements in ways that will be compelling to 
>> people  who haven't been privvy to this sort of discussion.
>> (And, I'd send text, but it's my text that is clearly the problem
>> ;-) ).
> 
> Well, we'd appreciate if years of experience might allow you to 
> anyway now suggest alternate text.   :-)
> 
> But I'm happy that you seem to agree that the original bulleted 
> lists might better be replaced by more elaborate explanations of 
> what should be provided, and that it is most essential that the two
> primary questions you re-stated above are thought out and answered
> convincingly in a registration document.

On the other hand, 10 pages of text is not friendly, either. Brevity
would be better here, if we can boil the essentials down to a few
points of paragraphs (and then point people to some of the recent
registration RFCs for examples).

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/