Perhaps it's time to think about enhancements to the NANOG list...?

Sun Mar 21 06:48:39 UTC 2021

And some of the lessons of group creation on USENET was:

1. You don't create a sub-topic to try to generate discussion. So for
example you don't create talk.baseball.redsox because no one ever
posts about the redsox in talk.baseball. It doesn't work. Not really
relevant here tho it might become relevant.

2. You create a sub-topic to split large amounts of traffic like when
there's just too much talk about the redsox and yankees in
talk.baseball so you create talk.baseball.redsox and
talk.redsox.yankees so those discussions can find each other. It's
generally best when you're trying to split an overflow of traffic
rather than enumerate or classify it or enforce some policy.

3. You don't create a sub-topic because some people don't want to see
certain posts like talk.baseball.fights hoping to draw talk of
on-field fights off talk.baseball.

I think what's going on here is #3 mostly trying to pose as #2 and
probably is unwise because it probably won't work plus or minus how
much one can try to force the occasional off-topic poster off the list
or to shame them.

That is, people will seek their audience.

P.S. Getto was a (mostly involuntary) Jewish neighborhood in Venice,
Italy which is where the term Ghetto derives. I've been there
(voluntarily.) "Getto" means "foundry" in Italian, it was a less
desirable area because of the foundry there.

On March 20, 2021 at 22:04 jim at reptiles.org (Jim Mercer) wrote:
 > On Sat, Mar 20, 2021 at 10:54:57AM -0500, Mike Hammett wrote:
 > > That seems like a reasonable proposal. NANOG-OffTopic, NANOG-Discuss, NANOG-BizDev, NANOG-xyz, something (more more than one something). 
 > 
 > there used to be a thing called USENET.
 > 
 > it facilitated a forum-like interface to mailing-lists, with the ability for
 > anyone to create their own sub-forums.
 > 
 > it was quite popular for a while.
 > 
 > --jim
 > 
 > -- 
 > Jim Mercer     Reptilian Research      jim at reptiles.org    +1 416 410-5633
 > 
 > Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of
 > arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather
 > to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up,
 > totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"
 >  -- Hunter S. Thompson

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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