Novice sysadmins

Wed Dec 6 12:17:28 UTC 2017

On Wednesday, 6 December, 2017 03:53, Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org> wrote:

>On Tue, Dec 05, 2017 at 09:54:21AM -0700, Grant Taylor via NANOG
>wrote:

>> If you are trying, make an honest mistake, and are willing to
>> correct it when others politely let you know, you will quite 
>> likely find people willing to help you.  Especially if you 
>> return the favor in kind.

>Yes.  That's how we all get better at this.  And when any of us
>learn, we all benefit, so it's in our mutual best interest to 
>share knowledge.
>(I've learned more here than I can measure.  And I'm grateful for
>it.)

>> If you are being a hooligan and not responding to problems 
>> reported to you or purposefully ~> wantonly doing things 
>> to others ... good luck.

>And the latter is the problem: we are faced, unfortunately, 
>with massive operations that were designed, built, and deployed 
>without the slightest consideration for responsible behavior 
>toward the rest of the Internet.

And here for all these years a thought the bargain was that you
agree to carry my traffic without molestation and in return I
covenant not to molest your infrastructure or create a nuisance
or mess that you have to mitigate or clean up.

Of late this thinking seems to have gone mostly by the wayside.

It used to be that only the deliberate/wonton transgressors
violated that covenant, however, it seems that molestation 
and nuisance creation have been spreading like an epidemic
for a number of years.

In fact it is quite common these days that if one brings up in
discussion that to act in a certain manner would create a nuisance
that others have to clean up and therefore you need to take 
special precautions to not create the nuisance in the first place, 
seems all too often be a cause for derision which, in my experience, 
results in not being invited to participate further.

It also seems quite common that when these people then go ahead 
with their ill-conceived plans and obtain the result you told 
them would accrue, they act all surprised and astonished.

The "Well, I did warn you" usually does not go over too well.