On 2016 May 11 (Wed) at 19:27:05 +0200 (+0200), denis wrote: :HI all : :Sorry guys but these sort of discussions really do bring tears to my eyes. I :know you guys are out there on the front line of the internet, running :businesses and the RIPE DB is only one small part of that process for you. So :I can't blame you for forgetting the details of why things were done the way :they are and the discussions at the time some features were implemented. That :was why the RIPE NCC used to have people who maintained a collective history :to remind you. But I can and do blame you for closing your eyes, covering :your ears and burying your collective heads in the sand about moving forward :technically. Thank you for the history lesson! As someone new to the WG I appreciate it. :OK one point at a time. When "last-modified:" was discussed and agreed it was :agreed by consensus that it would reflect user modifications. When database :syntax or semantics changed or when policy changes required bulk updates of :data across many users, possibly involving thousands, tens of thousands or :even millions of objects, it was agreed that this sort of database management :change would be done silently, as far as the database system is concerned, :but talked about more generally on these lists. For that the RIPE NCC :implemented an internal update process that allows the normal notifications :to be suppressed and the "last-modified:" attribute not to be updated. Sigh. Ok, thanks for this information. Do you recall roughly when that was decided / proposal? I'd like to look at the discussions and (possibly) submit a new proposal. :If the RIPE Database is important to your business then you should keep up to :date with important changes. But we all know most users don't. So when they :receive a notification showing their data has been changed a common reaction :is to scream at the NCC about 'someone' changing their data without their :consent. When the number of objects changed is very large that can cause all :sorts of problems for the NCC. For those members that are NOT part of the WG, where are these important changes documented? How should non-WG members get updated? Remember: there was no announcement of this change outside of the WG. And yes, I _am_ that person that yelled about RIPE changing my objects this time, and it did bother me. I was even more bothered by randomly discovering the change, instead of it being communicated (either by an announce mail, or by a notify email). My inital reaction was not that this was a thing done on purpose, but was caused by corruption or bad actors. :So I recommend that you keep to these original guidelines and don't send out :notifications and don't update the "last-modified:" attribute. It is not a :user instigated change and the actual change is administrative rather than :changing operational data. So knowing about this change doesn't really tell :most people anything useful. If you mean "don't change the objects, just change the rules", I 100% agree. :The compromise some have mentioned sounds good. BUT that is not how the :database software works. One notification is generated for one update. This :may be a single object and may be sent to multiple email addresses. The :notification is standardised with boiler plate text and the addition of the :object with a diff. There is no mechanism to add any additional explanation :or to customise the notification in any way. You either get this or nothing. :It is a simple yes or no. That is sad, but the technical reality is relevant. A pity, because the compromise seemed palatable to most people. :This is very old technology. Nothing is easy to change. Time and time again :we hit these situations where the inflexibility of the data model and the :static code on top of it prevents useful ideas being implemented. When are :you going to take your collective heads out of the sand and admit it is long :overdue for a serious review? What should the WG do, then? Ask the NCC to write new code? Update the data-model? -- It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck? One in a million, perhaps.