Opinions wanted re blog-style NANOG list content

Thu Sep 8 12:31:32 UTC 2005

For the present, not the future, we've been experimenting with doing this
for a while and the large scale scalability issues in a blog with 86000+
posts in it.

See http://blogs.semperen.com/nblog (RSS at
http://blogs.semperen.com/nblog/feed)

This is cached in a 10 minute interval so response time may appear to have
a high variance.

FWIW, there are considerable issues in tuning current blogging software
for handling the number of posts in the historical NANOG forum, mostly
because "normal" blogs allow one to get away with very sloppy SQL queries,
joins, grouping, etc without.  They perform well with several hundred
posts.  They don't with 86000+.  We restructured a lot of the queries to
improve performance and it is still a work in progress.  With that said,
use at your own risk and it may be unavailable from time to time as we
continue to evolve it.

I put this on the main list so those that want to read via RSS are at
least aware there is an RSS version available.

Part of my motivation for doing this is I was tired of everyone asking
"can you remove this post, I really didn't mean that", etc.  At least now,
they can find the post and comment on it.

When performance is where I like it, I want to add more NOG lists and
operationally relevant mailing lists.

Take a look if you like, but be gentle.  It's a work in progress.

Eric
ekgermann at cctec.com

>
> [bcc'd to nanog at nanog.org]
>
> Call for Community Participation
>
> The NANOG Steering Committee is interested in hearing feedback from
> the community about the following topic. Private comments may be sent
> to steering at nanog.org. Public discussion is encouraged, and should
> take place on the nanog-futures mailing list.
>
> For information about subscription to the nanog-futures mailing list,
> see <http://www.nanog.org/email.html>.
>
>
> Commentary on Current Events on the NANOG List
>
> Many threads on NANOG begin with a bare reference to some article
> published elsewhere (e.g. a blog, or a news organisation web site).
> While some of these threads have undoubted relevance to network
> operations, others are certainly off-topic.
>
> Some participants of the NANOG list have expressed frustration at the
> perceived off-topic chatter on the list resulting from these threads.
> Other participants have commented that they welcome the content.
> There is no clear majority opinion known to the NANOG Steering
> Committee.
>
> A common medium for distribution of information such as those
> contained in these NANOG threads is the weblog. Blogs have
> established mechanisms for facilitating follow-up commentary from
> readers, and are also readily syndicated through RSS or e-mail.
>
> Two notable such blogs already exist:
>
>     Fergie's Tech Blog <http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/>, an individual
>       initiative of long-time NANOG contributor Paul Fergusson
>
>     Merit's SlashNOG <http://slashnog.merit.edu/>, a proof-of-concept
>       discussion forum styled after Slashdot
>
> The NANOG Steering Committee is interested in hearing the opinions of
> the community on this topic. For example:
>
> 1. Should current events/news bulletin-style threads be declared
> universally off-topic for the NANOG mailing list?
>
> 2. Should NANOG encourage, facilitate, or otherwise support a blog or
> similar forum for this content?
>
> Please follow-up to the nanog-futures mailing list <http://
> www.nanog.org/email.html> or send private commentary to the NANOG
> Steering Committee at <steering at nanog.org>.
>
>
> Joe Abley
> (for the NANOG SC)
>
>
>