E-mail addresses and signatures [was: RE: 96.0.0.0/6 reachability testing]

Fri May 4 19:20:12 UTC 2007

What follows is an off-topic meta-comment, so if you weren't following 
earlier stuff in this thread, you might as well stop reading.  My 
apologies for furthering this.

On Wed, 2 May 2007 andrew2 at one.net wrote:

>
> Warren Kumari wrote:
>> I don't think that Ron is choosing to put this .sig in his mail, some
>> ugly corporate mail gateway is probably appending it for him. While
>> he could spend a huge amount of time trying to explain to someone at
>> Time Warner that it is a stupid thing to do, I sure he has better
>> things to do...
>
> I don't see anywhere in the NANOG charter that says we have to use our
> corporate email addresses in correspondence with list.  From what I've seen,
> most of us don't.  I agree 100% that trying to get $corporation to remove
> the useless and annoying .sig's is like tilting at windmills.  But for the
> sanity and comfort of other list users, would it be too much to ask that
> people with annoying tacked-on .sig's use a personal mail account when
> posting to the list?  I hear Google offers nice email accounts for a
> reasonable price.

At the risk of hypocracy as well as off-topicness, I'm rather hoping 
people don't follow this advice.

There are a few well-known people on this list whose employment situations 
and other affiliations don't need much explanation for anybody who has 
been following the industry closely.  There are many more NANOG posters 
who aren't so well known.  Some of these people post to the list a lot, 
often making assertions without evidence to back them up, and without 
enough information about who the poster is to figure out whether they're 
speaking from inside knowledge or relevant experience, whether they work 
for somebody with a strong stake in the issue under discussion, or or 
whether they are most likely just making stuff up.

I'd much rather see messages with .signatures full of legalese at the end 
(generally after I've stopped reading anyway), than messages sent with 
less information about the poster's identity.

I realize I'm following my own advice here, largely due not having changed 
my mailing list configurations after a period of unstable employment a few 
years ago.

-Steve Gibbard
Network Architect
Packet Clearing House
www.pch.net

Speaking for myself, not for my employer, and not for any NANOG-related 
committees I've been on in the past.