I would go even further and not even talk about the trees and nodes. Also, echoing elsewhere in this thread, making it really clear that this is not a case of DMARC is coming for your TLD. So, I’d propose something super basic like this for the second paragraph:
Domain name suffixes (for example .com, .eu, and .co.uk) are controlled by registries, who either directly or through accredited registrars, facilitate the registration and management of domain names below these suffixes. DMARC currently permits expression of policy only for domain names and not for domain suffixes. Since its deployment in 2015, specialist use cases have been identified where it may be desirable for a suffix to express a DMARC policy. This document describes an experimental extension to DMARC to add that capability. Ken. From: dmarc <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Murray S. Kucherawy Sent: Monday 22 February 2021 07:09 To: Barry Leiba <[email protected]> Cc: Dave Crocker <[email protected]>; IETF DMARC WG <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [dmarc-ietf] Fwd: I-D Action: draft-ietf-dmarc-psd-10.txt On Fri, Feb 19, 2021 at 3:02 PM Barry Leiba <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I agree that the abstract is unclear. This makes no sense to me: domain names represent either nodes in the tree below which registrations occur, or nodes where registrations have occurred; it does not permit a domain name to have both of these properties simultaneously. I don't understand the distinction that it's trying to make between the two possibilities. I also don't see the antecedent to "these domains" in the final sentence of that paragraph. Beyond that: > I'm at a loss to understand what's confusing. I'm not convinced that > "registrations" in the > context of domain names is unclear to a reader familiar with this space. I am absolutely convinced that it is. Think of people in M3AAWG, for whom this is very relevant. Many of them don't know much about registries, registrars, and such, and in general, the average reader won't understand the difference, from a "registration" standpoint, between facebook.com<http://facebook.com> (which is registered) and "www.facebook.com<http://www.facebook.com>" (which is not). To the average reader, "facebook.com<http://facebook.com>" is registered under com, and "www.facebook.com<http://www.facebook.com>" is registered under facebook. And the ones who don't think that will likely not understand why we can't just talk about second-level domains and be done with it. Actually that's a community that I would expect to know exactly what all those terms mean and how they are all related. I think the use of "registered" seems to be the source of some of this confusion. To work with the example you gave here, I agree that "facebook.com<http://facebook.com>" is registered (under "com"), but disagree that "www.facebook.com<http://www.facebook.com>" is registered at all; "facebook.com<http://facebook.com>" was delegated to some company that now "owns" that piece of the namespace tree and can create whatever it wants under there without any external arrangement. To my mind, "register" involves a specific transaction, sometimes involving money, with whoever gates access to make those delegations. All that needs to be explained in the Introduction, not the Abstract. But the Abstract has to explain enough for a reader to understand why she might or might not be interested in getting the document and reading it. So it's going to be tough to word it carefully and to keep it concise. But we have to. Stressing a point: We very clearly do NOT want to explain this stuff in the Abstract. In fact, we don't have to explain much at all in the Abstract. What we have to do is make sure that the Abstract doesn't say stuff that's *wrong* or confusing. So let's try to find some fifth-grade language that can suffice, and then make sure the Introduction has the right words to make it clear to people who know how to do email, but who don't already understand the issues involved here. How's this?: DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is a scalable mechanism by which a mail-originating organization can express domain-level policies and preferences for message validation, disposition, and reporting, that a mail-receiving organization can use to improve mail handling. Within the Domain Name System (DNS) on the public Internet, which is organized as a tree, some nodes of that tree are reserved for use by registrars, who delegate sub-trees to other operators on request. DMARC currently permits expression of policy only for such sub-trees. There is a marked desire to be able to express policy for the reserved nodes as well. This document describes an experimental extension to DMARC to add that capability. If we like that as a replacement Abstract, I'll carry on and propose a revision to the Introduction. -MSK
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