[OT] Re: Banned on NANOG

Fri Dec 3 02:52:30 UTC 2004

I'm under the impression that a discussion of that sort will occur in Los
Vegas. There has been significant off-list chatter regarding this.

Its entirely possible for nanog-l to be self policing, or, failing that, for
users to simply use procmail on those who wander off-topic (for some
definition of off-topic). Putting an [OT] subject banner on such posts is
also nice. 

There's such a thing as throwing the baby out with the bathwater. When
highly clued, genuinely contributing folks are treated poorly for the
occasional in-joke or comment, the S:N ratio will suffer in the longer term.

I'm certainly hoping that the network operations community will feel no need
to "talk with their feet" after we all sit down with the Merit staff and let
our feelings be known, but that is certainly a possibility.

- Dan

On 12/2/04 8:48 PM, "Paul Vixie" <vixie at vix.com> wrote:

> 
> banned_on_nanog at yahoo.com (nanog gonan) writes:
> 
>> This whole censorship thing has me wondering as to the continued
>> viability of this list as a place where the clue-heavy hang out and speak
>> freely.  Paul Vixie has been warned, randy Bush has been banned.  Who
>> else has been banned that'd be considered a clue-heavy NANOG poster?
> 
> on the one hand, thank you for your kind words.  inside isc i'm known as
> being somewhat clue-light most of the time (probably with justification.)
> 
> on the other hand, susan's warnings to me were absolutely called for, as
> i was off in the weeds a little bit TOO often.  i'm fine w/ what happened.
> 
>> Why are folks being banned?  Last I heard, procmail still works.  Folks
>> are becoming afraid to post due to worries about being banned.
>> 
>> S/N: Isn't the goal to increase S and reduce N?  If you reduce both S and
>> N, you don't get a better signal.  With randy gone, the S has definitely
>> decreased.  Who else is gone that reduces S?
> 
> i think you're looking at this the wrong way.  consider what happens to a
> habitat when a given species has no limit to its population -- no shortage
> of food, no natural predator.  the first time i heard the word "overrun"
> it was not about buffer size but about biology.
> 
> individual humans usually have a conscience.  groups of humans usually don't.
> if not for susan reminding us from time to time why this mailing list exists
> and why we subscribed to it in the first place, and prodding us gently to
> get on with that business and stay out of side topics, the "S" would remain
> constant but the "N" would ratchet upward and we'd be back on Usenet again.
> 
> i'm hoping that there will be an in-person discussion of mailing list "rules
> of the road" in las vegas.  if any significant chunk of the nanog population
> feels that there are presently too many rules, and too high an "S", and not
> enough "N", then they'll presumably "vote with their feet" (or cause the
> rules to become more relaxed.)

-- 