SORBS on autopilot?

Fri Jan 15 18:29:25 UTC 2010

On Fri, 15 Jan 2010, Michelle Sullivan wrote:

> Well 3 people have ignored the last 2 sentences... so please tell me what is 
> unclear in them?  The only correct response was in 260573 when someone

The robot response, like much of the SORBS web site is rather longwinded, 
and I suspect many people, by the time they process

  Not all the IP space you requested can be delisted at this
  time. Please review carefully our FAQ, located at the following URI

are so fuming mad that they either don't read all the way down to the 
final paragraph or aren't thinking clearly by the time they get there.

I know from personal experience, that my reaction was to get to this 
point, read/re-read the above mentioned FAQ, make changes to the 
in-addr.arpa, and resubmit the request.  This was clearly the wrong way 
to proceed, but even if you read as far as:

  I'm now marking this request as 'answered' as I think there's nothing
  more for me to do. If you feel otherwise, please reply to this message
  to re-open your ticket. In particular, if you change your rDNS
  information.

This really doesn't make it clear that a reply to this response will 
reopen the ticket in a human processed queue...so "what's the difference 
between massaging my rDNS and resubmitting vs massaging my rDNS and 
replying?"  The assumption might well be "no difference" so we keep 
tweaking the rDNS and banging our heads against R2D2.

Now, if that final paragraph was replaced with

  I'm now marking this request as 'answered' as I think there's nothing
  more for me to do. If you feel otherwise, please reply to this message.
  Your reply will re-open this ticket in a queue handled by our human
  support staff.

  If you make changes to your rDNS and submit a new request, that
  request will open a new ticket which will be handled by this robot.
  Since SORBS caches all rDNS for [some TTL] which may be longer than your
  TTL, we may not even recognize that your rDNS has changed.

some of the SORBS DUL hate mail might be avoided.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jon Lewis                   |  I route
  Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
  Atlantic Net                |
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