[Nanog-futures] [admin] RE: Creating a crystal clear and pureInternet

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> MLC was discussing blogs recently. I don't think I like your 
> idea - I doubt many people will post to blog, but frankly, as 
> long as on-list traffic becomes operational, I'm all for that!

The point is that one of the list features is a searchable web archive.
By changing the software used to provide the archive to some blogging
package, we won't subtract anything from what we have now. But we could
have a more open AUP for blog comments than for list postings. People
who feel more comfortable with newer Internet tools can subscribe to an
RSS feed from the blog rather than the mailing list. The gateway would
be one-way, i.e. no blog comments are fed back into the list. This would
mean that every list member needs to have a username (could be list
email address) and a password, but that is not unusual in the world of
mailing lists.

> > What we have here is a failure of the imagination. 
> (paraphrased from 
> > the
> > 911 commission report)
> Why don't you volunteer for MLC? (serious question).

Probably because of my perception that it is a police force,
not a team of gardeners. And because I am not one of the
Internet old-timers, i.e. I only joined NANOG in 1994 which
makes me one of the 3rd wave of newcomers. And I really don't
approve of the cliquish approach that dominates a lot of the
debate.

This reminds me of an incident heading to a NANOG meeting
in Tampa Florida. I was on the shuttle bus headed to the
hotel and some of the engineers sitting right near the driver
were proclaiming with pride that they were the people who 
actually run the Internet. At that time, it was probably 
true that the people on the NANOG list were the key players
who ran the Internet's networking infrastructure and I think
the cliquishness helped because it caused people to copy
best practices from each other and grow the network faster
than otherwise would have been possible.

However, I don't believe that it is true any longer that
NANOG members are the key players in running the Internet's
networking infrastructure. Vendors have a much bigger role
with their training and books and certifications. I think
it is a mistake for NANOG to try to recover past glories and
have such a narrow focus on so-called "Internet operations".

--Michael Dillon