These are the minutes from the Network Information Services Infrastructure (NISI) WG meeting of Monday, March 16. The Agenda consisted of: Announcements/Status Reports Information Discovery Next Project 1. Announcements/Status Reports The "Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure" document was issued as an FYI 12 in February. The document on "Privacy and Integrity Issues in NIC Databases" is now in draft form and will be reviewed by the volunteer authors. (Basically, all the authors had seen the outline, but not the draft at the time of the meeting.) Once they are satisfied, it will be sent to the whole NISI list for review and comments. 2. Info Discovery This was left from the last meeting. There was great interest in the question of, once we have information, how do we let users know it's there? Since the lats meeting, lots of other groups have also become interesting in this question (well, there were a lot of people interested long before the last meeting obviously). We decided that this was an implementation question beyond the scope of the NISI group. We would stay informed of the work of other groups and provide input from a user point of view to them. (After our group met, I attended the wais-X.500 BOF, which turned out to include many other "info servers." That group decided to form an official working group to work on matters related to allowing existing info services to interact. This is something to keep an eye on.) 3. Next NISI Project a. brainstorming We tossed around a few ideas for future projects, which I list here in no particular order. This was brainstorming, so don't ask for detailed descriptions of each idea. - service discovery (finding out what services are available on the Internet) - procedures for NICs to deposit information into the various info services - a "nethelp" utility that would give users fast, uniform info on what the Internet is and how to use it - a list of useful services to do - a list of services each site offers - a mailing list archive - a clarification of the core of info about the Internet that all Internet NICs should provide - tools to provide info Of these, we had the most interest in the lists of services and the "nethelp" (Martyne Hallgren must get credit for that coinage) service. b. list of services doc This doc will follow the IAFA recommendations and publish a list of the services available from that administrative subdomain (not necessarily just from that one site, but from the various service providers at that administrative entity). The list of services is something like a description of the various services and information on how to access them. This document may, in fact, overlap the Nethelp doc described next. It may have been another approach to the same information. I'm sure any overlap will come to light as work progresses on the docs. For now, let us think of this document as the description of the services that a nethelp tool could access (i.e. the tool could access these descriptions). The next document describes what we want the tool to look like (generically) and do. Peter Deutsch, Jake Feinler, John Clement, Cyndi Mills, and April volunteered to work on this document. A draft of this document is due by the next IETF meeting in July. c. Nethelp doc This doc is aimed at specifying the type of information a nethelp service would provide. A nethelp service is envisioned to be something a new user can very easily access that will orient him toward what the Internet is and where he can get more info about it. But what info should such a service provide? Here are some of the ideas that were tossed around: - network use etiquette and guidelines - new user guide fino - usage policy - info re the net - net access info - resources and services - answers to commonly asked questions (which we can glean from NICs) - who to call for help Other thoughs re this doc were should it have a standard interface or not (the vote was no, but an easy interface is necessary); it should include help for individual sites re what they can add/customize; it should address the fears a new user has about breaking stuff if he tries new things; it could be scalable and include hooks to add information that might benefit more experiences users as well, or include pointers to more detailed, technical info an different subjects. Specifying concrete ideas in this area might add to the momentum of getting funding to implement such a utility or help those with info servers to extend them to this use. Another idea regarding the interface was that it could start with standard questions, such as who-is, what-is, where-am-i, how, where-is, etc. Although the scope of the document was not fully defined in the meeting, it will concentrate on what information the NISI group would recommend that such a program contain, possibly even including explicit text, what services such a program should provide, and, generally speaking, what the program could look like. It will not necessarily cover implementation strategies, although those can be considered as well. Martyne Hallgren, Ellen Hoffman, Scott Williamson, Marsha Perrot, Tim Berners-Lee, Pat, and April will be working on this doc. Suggestions online are welcome! A draft of this document is due by the next IETF meeting in July. d. other There was another suggestion that came up amongst the nethelp discussion that is worth noting, although it is probably out of the scope of NISI (every time I say something like that, you can challenge it, of course). It was the suggestion that a controlled usage environment be created where users can test out their knowledge of how to use different Internet resources, such as FTP. It would be a closed environment in that it would not affect Internet use or operations, but would be realistic in that it would simulate the Internet environment. It might have slightly more user friendly error messages and more help/guidance in using the net. Such an environment could be used to allay fears new users have about using the net that cause them to experiment less than they might otherwise if they were confident they couldn't break anything. It would be especially useful for pre-college age users. Action Items: April and Pat to write new goals and milestones for the WG. Volunteers start working on the docs. WG to follow new goals and milestones. (We'll send them to the list.)