On 19 Apr 2007, at 16:22, Shane Kerr wrote:


The worst problem that can occur is that someone will enter a

reference to their person/role object just as we delete it. However,

as we are only deleting unreferenced person/role objects, the time

needed to re-create them is minimal. We suspect that a very large

proportion of the unreferenced person/role objects that we will be

deleting are abandoned objects that are no longer used.


A bit of thinking can come up with some scenerios that might be

worse(*).


I definitely think any minor problems are more than outweighed by the

removal of unused personal data! 



I personally think it would be a mistake not to at least attempt to notify the contact by email.

And sending 80,000 emails isn't exactly a massive amount to send in the grand scheme of things ... and whilst processing 80,000 bounces wouldn't be fun there are ways to mitigate the whole bounce process.

If there is concern about load on the current RIPE mail servers, then simply setup another mail server / MX specifically for this project where these mails can be sent from.

Personally I think the bigger problem isn't unreferenced objects, but the bigger issue is with "orphaned" objects (*).  The "new" role objects overcome a lot of this, but every day I still see objects with contact details of people who left the company 5-10 years earlier and are still referenced .. and unravelling that mess becomes a whole lot harder.


-- 
Jon Morby
FidoNet Registration Services Ltd
tel: 0845 004 3050 / fax: 0845 004 3051
web: http://www.fido.net/