North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Proposed list charter/AUP change?

  • From: JC Dill
  • Date: Tue Jan 04 13:38:28 2005 
Bill Nash wrote:
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.
There are 2 problems with this.

1) A list already exists (spam-l) where these topics are discussed regularly and that list is a better place to discuss them due to the large number of people who have in-depth knowledge and regularly contribute on those topics.

2) It is very hard to start talking about "spam" and limit the breadth of the replies to those that are on-topic for a network-operations focused list. Spam makes people angry, and angry people want to rant about how much they hate spammers and the various things "we" or "they" should do to solve the problem at the source. Angry people don't usually pay adequate attention to list policies so they blow over the policy line, time and time again.

For that reason, I believe that spam-related topics should be discussed on spam-l first, and then the topic should be raised on this list only if you can't find the info or contacts you need on the spam-specific list first.

I think the NANOG FAQ should elaborate on this distinction.

jc