[OT] Re: Banned on NANOG

Fri Dec 3 20:31:21 UTC 2004

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004, Lou Katz wrote:

> I was puzzled by this, since I basically lurk on the list, and
> have made very few postings.  I replied to Susan privately that,
> among other things, I had no record nor recollection of any
> previous warnings, and asked politely for information regarding
> these, since I seemed to have used up my warning limit. To this
> day I have received no replies to that query message whatsoever.

This last part seems to be the worst part of the recurring theme.

This is my first post directly to the NANOG list. Ever. I generally simply 
read the list, sometimes skip entire threads of little interest to me, and 
use nanog as someone decent daily disaster barometer. In the same light 
that scientists are more and more loathe to publish their findings for 
fear of prosecution or persecution in current political climates, the 
overall tone of posts here has changed, perceptibly, in the past months.

In almost every thread I've seen whiz by about folks being banned or 
sanctioned, the common element has been, overall, the moderator's complete 
lack of regard for list participants in explaining the why's of a removal. 
A post earlier this week even showed one use attempting to escalate past 
Susan. Until someone explicitly identified Susan inside the past six 
months, as the moderator, I'd never even *heard* of her, and I've been 
lurking on this list for years. While this may be due to my own 
inattention, I think it's a significant problem that the moderator is a 
largely invisible entity and is apparantly as accountable as 
sicherheitspolizei.

Long and short: I'm not a routing engineer for a major provider, but I'm a 
customer of more than one and the usefulness of this list in monitoring 
and maintaining my networks has significantly decreased as posters of 
various cluepower have been either removed, or simply discouraged from 
posting. This needs to change if nanog-l is to remain a viable entity.
It's great that Merit hosts all of this, but frankly, none of us exist 
solely to give some faceless moderator power. I know I don't.

I hope this will be one of the matters addressed in Vegas.

- billn