[rpd] Policy ID format

[Dr Paulos Nyirenda]

On 28 Oct 2014 at 11:24, Adam Nelson <adam at varud.com> wrote:

> Paulos, 
> 
> We did indeed consider that. Putting in the year opens us up to that
> issue but:
> 
> 1. The 'af' prefix is not delimited from the year. This helps people
> know it's not a date (i.e. af2015-4 instead of af-2015-4). 2. The
> final version will only have the year and number and so it won't look
> like a date (i.e. af2015-4). 3. Draft versions have the 'v' prefix -
> which helps disambiguate the format from a date (i.e. af2015-4-v3).
> 
> Context should also help here. These IDs will typically only be used
> on the rpd list, on the Afrinic website, or on sites aggregating RIR
> policies. Although the year being included gives 'dateness' to the ID,
> we really wanted that metadata in there in order to show some
> timeframe to the reader.
> 
> Does that address your concern?

I can live with it but potential for misunderstanding with date formats seems very big. It may 
seem trivial now but if there is a way to alleviate that they it would be better.

The fact that it needs explaining or clarifying shows that it is not intuitive enough as an 
identifier and that seems to make this still worrying.

Regards,

Paulos
======================
Dr Paulos B Nyirenda
NIC.MW & .mw ccTLD
http://www.registrar.mw


> 
> Cheers,
> Adam
> --
> Kili - Cloud for Africa: kili.io
> Musings:  twitter.com/varud
> More Musings: varud.com
> About Adam: www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson
> 
> On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:10 AM, Dr Paulos Nyirenda
> <paulos at sdnp.org.mw> wrote:
> 
>     Adam,
> 
>     I have a concern that the NNN will most likely be confused with a
>     month of the years YYYY if this is not properly put.
> 
>     In you example below, 3 looks like the month March of the years
>     2015 and that would not be right if the incident time of the
>     discussion was in January of 2015 or even November of 2015 - it
>     would get very confusing.
> 
>     Did the co-chairs consider that?
> 
>     Regards,
> 
>     Paulos (as myself)
>     ======================
>     Dr Paulos B Nyirenda
>     NIC.MW & .mw ccTLD
>     http://www.registrar.mw
> 
> 
>     On 27 Oct 2014 at 15:16, Adam Nelson <adam at varud.com> wrote:
> 
>     > Dear community,
>     >
>     > For the past few months, the Policy Development Working Group >
>     co-chairs along with the Secretariat have been discussing the >
>     restructuring of Policy IDs. We currently have a very verbose
>     system > that embeds a bunch of metadata into the ID. While this
>     metadata is > useful, it is also cumbersome to have within the ID
>     and simply > remembering the policy ID is almost impossible. > >
>     After much deliberation, we have come to agree on the following
>     format > for all future policy proposals (where YYYY is the year,
>     NNN is an > incremental number starting at 1 at the beginning of
>     each year, and > VVV is the version of the proposal): > >
>     afYYYY-NNN-vVVV > > For example, the 2nd draft of the 3rd proposal
>     of next year would be: > > af2015-3-v2 > > If the above policy
>     proposal were to be finalized, the version would > then be
>     dropped: > > af2015-3 > > Hopefully this is short enough for
>     people to remember easily. > > All prior policies will be updated
>     to the new ID with a field for the > old ID preserved for archival
>     purposes. > > If anybody has any specific concerns, please let us
>     know. > > Cheers, > Adam > > -- > Kili - Cloud for Africa: kili.io
>     > Musings: twitter.com/varud > More Musings: varud.com > About
>     Adam: www.linkedin.com/in/adamcnelson
> 
> 
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