Proposed list charter/AUP change?

Tue Jan 4 18:23:28 UTC 2005

The changes that people are discussing have little to do with
"what is" and "what isn't" on topic for the NANOG mailing list.

What it does have lots to do with is cooperating on examination
of the moderation and testing the current long-standing techniques
to determine if they need to be re-vamped to reflect sentiments 
of the community at large. 

To me, it's not a productive effort to micro-manage(or MERIT)
the list via the FAQ. The FAQ is a traditional and 
historically acceptable method of answering questions that are 
bound to come up repeatedly as a primary result of new participants 
from any source.

I am interested in discussing the possibilities of self-policing
the list. An example would be when I suggested you earn some stripes. 
I said it. You ignored it. I opened my killfile. You land on it.
That's much simpler. 

Writing complicated rules and creating a Politburo-like atmosphere
is in no-ones interest.

ObOp: Abuse desks are easily confused with SPAM since the context of
      abuse desk discussion is typically wrt ...SPAM. The earlier 
      email was more general, IMHO. 

-M<

--
Martin Hannigan                         (c) 617-388-2663
VeriSign, Inc.                          (w) 703-948-7018
Network Engineer IV                       Operations & Infrastructure
hannigan at verisign.com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu]On Behalf Of
> Bill Nash
> Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 12:51 PM
> To: Steve Sobol
> Cc: Susan Harris; nanog at merit.edu; Betty Burke
> Subject: Proposed list charter/AUP change?
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Steve Sobol wrote:
> > Susan keeps on claiming spam is offtopic for Nanog, yet the 
> AUP/Charter/FAQ 
> > don't mention spam other than telling us not to ask "I'm 
> being spammed, how 
> > can I make it stop?"
> >
> > If it's flat-out offtopic, no matter what, or if the 
> majority of list members 
> > don't want to talk about it on the list, why hasn't the FAQ 
> been updated? Or 
> > does Merit just want us to try to guess what is offtopic?
> >
> 
> Spam represents a significant percentage of email traffic, and its 
> delivery is increasingly via trojaned dsl/broadband devices. 
> Even spam 
> delivered from quasi-legitimate sources is usually an abuse 
> of resources 
> that some NSP/ISP is paying for. Discussion of functional 
> spam control at 
> the ISP level, I think, is absolutely on topic for a list of 
> this scope. 
> Please note, that I say 'functional'. Random complaints would 
> obviously 
> not fall into this category.
> 
> Examples would include:
> Working enterprise-scale spam filtering (Hourly mail volume 
> measured in 
> thousands)
> Discussion of edge/core SMTP filtering to curtail spam sources.
> Policy discussions for handling domestic and international 
> spam sources.
> Implementation, or requests for implementation, of SPF and similiar 
> controls.
> Inter-network cooperation for handling large scale issues.
> 
> I think this last is pretty much exactly what a list like 
> this is for, be 
> it spam, regional power outages, BGP shenanigans, or 
> widespread squirrel 
> detonations.
> 
> - billn
> 