[urn] improved management of registration requests

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

Hi all,

This message is mostly for discussion among the expert review team, but 
I'm sending it to the public list for greater transparency.

At times, we (mostly I as the team lead) have forgotten to take action 
on registration requests, as just happened with the `c2pa` namespace. 
This is not the quality of service we owe to the community.

A few years ago I asked IANA whether they plan to offer infrastructure 
so that expert review teams can better manage registration requests. 
They had no such plans at the time, but we could pursue the relevant 
tools independently. The path I have in mind is that we could set up a 
GitHub repository in conformance with RFC 8874 and RFC 8875 (although 
this group is no longer an official IETF Working Group, because it grew 
out of the URN WG the guidance specified in those documents would still 
seem relevant).

Here is my perspective:

(1) we would use such a repository primarily for issue tracking

(2) discussion of substantive matters regarding registration requests 
would still happen on this list

(3) we might want to keep registration requests under source control, 
for several reasons:

(a) this might make it easier to work with (some) registrants, 
especially regarding less than substantive matters

(b) this might make it easier to work on version 2+ of namespace 
registrations

(c) I usually reformat approved registration requests before final 
submission to IANA (for instance to keep line lengths to 72 characters 
and to ensure consistency across registrations); it would be better if 
these changes, though relatively minor, were done in the open

(d) source control is good :-)

I'm curious what other expert review team members, and community members 
in general, think of this idea.

Peter