Would be the nic-hdl's in the RIPE-DB which has only a reference to an german domain object mark as "NEVER_REFD" now?
Yes, they will be marked as NEVER_REFD. We didn't change anything in the consistency project regarding to .de domain deletions. Even we did change something, since person objects will be created in RIPE whois db for a couple of months more, and since we won't have the new .de domains, our changes would be void.
I'm sorry, but I have a hard time comprehending the above. I have one brief question which may serve to clarify this issue: Is there a good reason to keep person objects in the RIPE database when they are no longer referenced by any other object in the database? I would have thought that the answer to that would be a resounding "no", so I am a little more than puzzled by the above conversation. - Håvard