a bit more coffee made me realize that what might best occur would be for the rir, some weeks BEFORE assigning from a new block issued by the iana, put up a pingable for that space and announce it on the lists so we can all test BEFORE someone uses space from that block.
ARIN meeting happens in Orlando in about 1 month from now. There is at least one open mike session on the agenda and there is also a new policy workshop if folks think that this practice needs to be made into a formal policy. Also, on the ARIN website at http://www.arin.net/about_us/ab_org_bot.html you can find contact info for the Board of Trustees. These are the people who can decide that something makes perfect sense and instruct staff to just do it without going through the process of changing policies. Seems to me that this idea falls into the "just do it" category, i.e. it's operational best practice. So if you want this feature, tell ARIN about it! --Michael Dillon P.S. there is an upcoming RIPE meeting in Stockholm at the end of May. As above, tell them that this is important for them to be doing.