North American Network Operators Group
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Re: i am not a list moderator, but i do have a request

  • From: Steve Gibbard
  • Date: Mon Aug 14 13:58:10 2006

I'm not a list moderator either, anymore. I spent enough time moderating the NANOG list to get thoroughly disgusted with those who need babysitters to supervise them in a professional forum. I'm sure the current group of volunteer moderators would appreciate some common sense and common courtesy on the part of the list members.

Please, think before you post. Ask yourself some questions about the topic. Does whatever you're saying have to do directly with Internet operations, rather than with some other aspect of your professional or personal life? Is it going to be useful to the rest of the members of the list? Useful enough that a few thousand people should each at least spend 30 seconds figuring out whether it's worth reading? Is there a more appropriate forum, not because it's completely off-topic, but because the subset of NANOG subscribers who care about an issue are also subscribed elsewhere (like routes, the most specific mailing list should win, right?)?

If you've decided the topic is appropriate (in other words, that it's not, say, what to tell your executives about flying through London), figure out if your message adds anything. Are you contributing anything new, or arguing for the sake of arguing? Has what you're going to say already been said? If you're contributing new analogies, are you adequately supporting them to make a broader point, or are you just throwing them out there to show off your creativity? If making a legal argument, are you backing it up with relevant case law, or merely with analogies that seem relevant to you? If you're making a business or technical argument, can you point to relevant experience, or at least sound theory, to back up whatever you're saying?

Since this list is read by many of your professional peers, what impact will your posts have next time you're looking for a job. Will potential employers be impressed at your reasonableness and restraint, or scared off by your lack of self control?

Please, don't make your volunteer list administrators spend their time chasing after you. They're there as a last resort, not as an immediate supervisor.

-Steve

On Mon, 14 Aug 2006, Paul Vixie wrote:


http://www.whitestar.linuxbox.org/mailman/listinfo/botnets 

thanks, didn't know about it. But isn't it still usefull, when urgent
matters concerning botnets will still discussed on the nanog-list?
Please let me disabussed to it, but it's just my opinion.

almost everything that happens in the world is urgent to somebody somewhere.

not everything that happens on the internet is urgent to everybody on nanog.

there are too many topics (and too many botnets) for nanog to cover them all.