I think the key question here is whether the contents of a registered
well-known URL need to have an interoperable specification available.
If so, the current registration policy (Specification Required, which
implies Designated Expert) is appropriate.
If we're willing to allow anything to be registered (e.g., FooCorp
wants to place a completely opaque file on Web servers, and reserve
URI space for it; likewise for a developer who wants to try something
out, only to decide next week that it's not a good idea, or that they
got it slightly wrong), First Come First Served may be more appropriate.
Getting an entry in this registry effectively dictates the format of a
URL on every Web server on the planet. Do we really want to
accommodate developers with such short attention spans?
Regardless of that, I agree that the registration process explanation
in the draft needs to be tightened up, and that more visible feedback
would be helpful. I think this could be addressed by creating a
dedicated mailing list for review (assuming we keep the current
policy) and having the initial submission and discussion take place on
it; it would be the job of the expert reviewer to forward approved
registrations to IANA for publication.
Cheers,
On 23/10/2009, at 3:38 AM, Dan Connolly wrote:
Sorry I didn't review and comment when the draft first
became available...
Regarding:
"Before a period of 30 days has passed, the Designated
Expert will either approve or deny the registration request,
communicating this decision both to the review list and to IANA."
-- http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-nottingham-site-meta-03.txt
My experience is that this sort of latency results in developers
working around the IANA and IETF. Please set up a form so
that with latency of a few seconds, somebody can have their
token provisionally registered. (Perhaps an email callback
will have to precede the form.)
By way of example, consider the W3C XPointer Scheme Name Registry form
http://www.w3.org/2005/04/xpointer-schemes/0register
(though it's perhaps not completely shiny either...
I see one example of "Status: Being reviewed
Last updated on 2006-10-11" on
http://www.w3.org/2005/04/xpointer-schemes/ )
I have tried to keep W3C out of the registry business all together,
but IANA is widely reputed to be slow and opaque, and my own
personal experience bears that out to some extent, so I can't
completely stop people who are willing to set up registries in W3C
(not to mention elsewhere...). If IANA has in fact gotten a lot better
lately, perhaps we just need to address the perception part.
As it is, section 5 doesn't even give an exact email
address of where to send registration requests. That sends
people on a scavenger hunt right from step 1.
Perhaps a/the "datatracker" addresses my concern about latency
and transparency... if mail to iana(_at_)iana(_dot_)org results in an
automated "ticket" response, with a pointer to a status page that
always
has a clear bound on the latency for the next step, that
would suffice (if it's actually documented in section 5).
Hmm... it's entitled "IETF I-D Tracker", which suggests
its scope doesn't include IANA registration requests.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/idtracker/
--
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
gpg D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541 0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E
--
Mark Nottingham http://www.mnot.net/
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