[db-wg] country codes in the RIPE Database (was: ORGANISATION country code)

Hi Denis,

On Tue, 7 Mar 2023 at 16:20, denis walker <ripedenis at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 7 Mar 2023 at 14:29, George Michaelson via db-wg <db-wg at ripe.net> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > I don't necessarily disagree with you about the risks here, but I
> > > suggest that the decision to deprecate or alter behavior with this
> > > field is not something which a single RIR should undertake without a
> > > wider conversation.
> >
> > In particular, I support this paragraph.
> >
> > We need to reach out to people who use this data and get them to tell
> > us what they need or want it to mean. Until we hear from them we are
> > just guessing.
>
> "what they need or want it to mean"
> You said it yourself Leo, if we try to change the perceived meaning of
> this data after 20+ years, many people will never get the message. We
> cannot 'fix' this particular piece of undefined data...ever!! We can
> debate it as long as we want but it changes nothing. As Cynthia said,
> she knows for sure "there are major online services that utilize the
> country attribute in inetnum objects for GeoIP data". This is despite
> the RIPE NCC telling people for over 20 years they cannot reliably do
> this. Every time anyone influences the wider geoIP data set with any
> data from this attribute, they are potentially corrupting that data
> set. There is nothing we can do to change that fact as long as this
> indeterminate data exists and is used against official advice.
>
> "We need to reach out to people who use this data"
> We have been discussing this issue on this mailing list for months. We
> have comments from a handful of people. That is out of tens of
> thousands of resource holders, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions,
> of consumers of this data. For the majority of people these
> discussions are not important. No outreach is likely to create any
> mass influx of opinion. That is an unfortunate reality. An informed,
> educated guess is often the best we can hope for.

This mailing list. You said it.

Lots of people from different types of organisations use data that
helps them without deep-diving into the communities that produce it.

Half the problem is that the RIPE community has spent 20 years writing
documentation that is barely glanced at by developers who decide that
this data means what they want it to mean. But do people from the RIPE
community engage with the people who run GeoIP databases? How can we
complain that people misunderstand us if we don't actively engage with
them about what they need the data to mean?

Kind regards,

Leo