Marc Lehmann wrote:
I haven't seen anybody argue the new data is better.
It appears you overlooked some arguments in that direction; see <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2014-August/021283.html> for example.
The only argument that trivially stands in favour is that it decreases maintainance burden
Decreasing maintenance burden is not trivial. As the principal maintainer I feel the burden more than most, and it's a burden I'd rather lighten before handing it off to my successor. I believe the data entries in question were mostly invented, perhaps to give customers the warm feeling that there are specific answers for everything (even when there aren't). Unless one has investigated the matter it may be hard to fully appreciate how misleading these data entries are, or how pointless and demoralizing it is to curate bogus data. We can't avoid the invented-data problem entirely (as the format requires *something* there), but it's good to lessen it when we can.