[db-wg] phone number required for person objects

Hi

On Wed, 25 May 2022 at 23:33, Gert Doering <gert at space.net> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> On Wed, May 25, 2022 at 12:02:48PM -0700, Leo Vegoda wrote:
> > I was actually suggesting that instead of saying that technology #1 is
> > mandatory and technology #2 is optional we just say that one of the
> > supported technologies must be listed. Then we can add and remove
> > technologies as needed without having to make decisions about what
> > people *must* use.
>
> I like that suggestion.
>
> > But if we must define a single technology that is mandatory then
> > e-mail is a better choice than phone.
>
> I actually disagree with that - speaking from my use case as a user
> of the RIPE DB.  If I bother going there, it's urgent, and I want
> something to happen *now* (otherwise, I'm not going to bother).
> E-Mail might arrive with any delay, or never, and feedback might
> come, or not.
>
> So, no, *for the purpose of contact data in the RIPE DB*, I do not
> think that "e-mail is better than phone".

Don't forget we are talking about all contacts here, not only the tech
contacts. So we are also considering the admin and abuse contacts as
well as route ping and DNS zone contacts and contacts for external
services like RIPE Atlas. For many of these a mandatory email is
almost certainly the better option than a mandatory phone. I can't
imagine anyone dictating an abuse report over the phone. ROLE objects
can be used for any contact and for many smaller operations probably
their one ROLE object is used for all their contacts. Now of course we
can consider the "abuse-mailbox:" attribute as a special case. As the
name suggests, it must be an email address. But across the board, when
considering all contact types in use today, if we require one
mandatory contact perhaps email edges ahead of the phone. It is also
easier to set up a non personal email address than a non personal
phone number.

But also keep in mind that we are talking about a mandatory baseline
communication method to make sure a contact is contactable, otherwise
the contact has no purpose. All the other methods are optionally
available as well. Any tech help desk that operates a 24/7 service is
almost certainly going to provide a phone number in addition to an
email address.

cheers
denis
proposal author

>
> (Of course I personally hate it if people call me.  But people who do
> so pretty quickly learn the difference between "it is urgent *now*,
> so phone is perfectly fine" and "an e-mail would have been sufficient")
>
> Gert Doering
>         -- NetMaster
> --
> have you enabled IPv6 on something today...?
>
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