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I don't have any problem with the concept of an abuse-c:, in whatever colour, shape or texture. the real problem that I (still) have after so many years is that we still lack a definition of "abuse", and which part of an organisation is supposed to deal with the "abuse".

Also note that usually there is an aspect of "incoming" and "originated" abuse.

In that case, db-wg will only supply the tools and not make any decision on the contents or the usage and we should get other working groups involved in this (anti-spam ?).

Indeed.

However in some sort of way, the information in the database is 'abused' by users in the way that they don't use the correct attributes. This in some form can be explained as the current tools lacking some functionality or being to complex to use for the larger public.

I agree.

So what we need to decide on is whether there is a problem and users will gain something if we add some functionallity to the system.

I think that the usability of the system is on-topic for this working group

definitely

and as far as my personal opinion goes, we need to do something extra to stop people from 'abusing' certain information before the majority decides that it's a lost game and start removing information which is usefull for other parts of the work like troubleshooting 'the internet'.

Private opinion: I am one of those who think it is a lost case already. How long has the info in changed: been abused to spam the folks for the address distribution, who simply update a record in the DB, with spam and port scan and xyz complaints?

We don't have to go further then to specify you can include only 1 valid email address and advice people to insert the address where they want to recieve the complaints and if you query the database for this information use this field as a default.

MarcoH

Wilfried.