Enforcing ISO-3166-1

[ginny listman]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2001, Shane Kerr wrote:

> On 2001-02-21 12:48:44 +0000, Cathy Murphy wrote:
> > 
> > So it's a matter of balancing, and we are trying to determine where we
> > should draw the line. Do we anticipate those most common mistakes,
> > knowing that there is the potential for creating bogus data, but
> > understanding that we are making submission easier? Or do we play
> > tough and shift the entire burden to those submitting templates?
> 
> Well, perhaps you could post a sample list here, and we can see if the
> entries are indeed obvious to the readers.  From my experiences with
> this topic, I feel that you can safely "auto-correct" most of the
> problems with almost no mismatches.  The examples you gave of Brasil and
> UK, for instance, are extremely common.  Things like Britian are also
> fairly common - not much ambiguity there, just wrongness.  ;)

My concern is not of ambiguity, rather a data management nightmare.  For
example, we have UK, Great Britain, England, etc.  None of which are
listed in ISO 3166.  What is there is United Kingdom, GB and GBR.  I can
think of at least 5 ways of expressing US, that are not "standard".  Are
we suppose to list to dbwg (or some other list) to make sure we've capture
all the common names?  Or just see what common errors we accumulate?  Why
can't we just educate the members and inform them about ISO 3166?  If we
accept a template with U.S.A., are we promoting the ignorance of an ISO
standard?

>   We corrected the address you submitted.  
>   
>     Country code: Netherlands 
> 

FYI, Netherlands is in ISO 3166 as the full name.  Therefore this would be
accepted.  However, if you had entered Nederlands, that's where there
could be a problem.

> 
> The real answer to this is of course a web (or other GUI) interface, so
> the user can pick from a list.  ;)

Agreed.  Or intention is to have a web based template.  However, not every
member would be willing to submit via the web.  Therefore, we will need to
address text-based templates.

> 
> Shane
> 


Ginny Listman
Director of Engineering
ARIN