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Re: registries and designated experts

2012-06-12 09:56:27

On 6/12/2012 7:19 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
it's not the role of the designated expert to
act as a gatekeeper with respect to the technical merits of the
technologies that trigger registration requests. It might be good to
have a wider discussion about the purpose of registries and the role of
designated experts, but IMHO it's not correct to conclude that a
technology is acceptable just because the designated expert didn't
object to the registrations related to that technology.


It's almost inevitable that many designated experts will, in fact, act as gatekeepers. For example the distinction between "won't do damage" vs. "looks like excellent engineering" is more subtle in practice than one might think. Especially absent very precise specification of review criteria and absent actual training of the reviewers.

While, yes, protocol specs that define the registry and review of its entries are supposed to provide the necessary details that do the distinction, I believe such texts do not get deep review for interpretive robustness. That is, I doubt they are bullet-proofed against the vagaries of differerent readers who might be doing the reviews or writing text for them.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker
 Brandenburg InternetWorking
 bbiw.net

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