on the one hand, thank you for your kind words.
You're welcome. I appreciate you helping raise the
clue level of the list.
on the other hand, susan's warnings to me were
absolutely called for, as i was off in the weeds a
little bit TOO often.
That's fine. Many of us have been warned and stopped
the activity that prompted the warning. Permament
bannishment of you would not be fine. This is what
I'm talking about.
feels that there are presently too many rules, and
too high an "S", and not enough "N", then they'll
presumably "vote with their feet" (or cause the
rules
to become more relaxed.)
No one is saying lower the S and raise the N. In fact
I was saying the opposite. Removal of the clue-heavy
is lowering the S in concert with the warnings which
lower the N. Simple math tells us that the overall
effect isn't to increase the S/N ratio.
I ask that the methodology of bannishment be posted to
the list, so we're all aware of the consequences of
too much OT. Is it permanent banishment or a
procedure similar to the one that William suggests?
How many warnings get one banished? Is it a certain
number of warnings over a time period or for all time?
Are the rules set in stone or do they change with
time to adapt to the situation at hand?
Who knows? A while back I posted a single brief note regarding
my perception of privacy and security issues with Gmail, after
a flurry of 'I have Gmail invites, if anyone wants one' posts.
Others responed to my single post, but I did not add any further
posts to this (or any other topic).
I got a stern message that was called my 'third' warning, and
that any further off-topic posts would get my posting privileges
revoked.
I was puzzled by this, since I basically lurk on the list, and
have made very few postings. I replied to Susan privately that,
among other things, I had no record nor recollection of any
previous warnings, and asked politely for information regarding
these, since I seemed to have used up my warning limit. To this
day I have received no replies to that query message whatsoever.
From this incident I can only conclude that all posts
are equal, but some are more equal than others.
This last part seems to be the worst part of the recurring theme.
This is my first post directly to the NANOG list. Ever. I generally simply read the list, sometimes skip entire threads of little interest to me, and use nanog as someone decent daily disaster barometer. In the same light that scientists are more and more loathe to publish their findings for fear of prosecution or persecution in current political climates, the overall tone of posts here has changed, perceptibly, in the past months.
In almost every thread I've seen whiz by about folks being banned or sanctioned, the common element has been, overall, the moderator's complete lack of regard for list participants in explaining the why's of a removal. A post earlier this week even showed one use attempting to escalate past Susan. Until someone explicitly identified Susan inside the past six months, as the moderator, I'd never even *heard* of her, and I've been lurking on this list for years. While this may be due to my own inattention, I think it's a significant problem that the moderator is a largely invisible entity and is apparantly as accountable as sicherheitspolizei.
Long and short: I'm not a routing engineer for a major provider, but I'm a customer of more than one and the usefulness of this list in monitoring and maintaining my networks has significantly decreased as posters of various cluepower have been either removed, or simply discouraged from posting. This needs to change if nanog-l is to remain a viable entity.
It's great that Merit hosts all of this, but frankly, none of us exist solely to give some faceless moderator power. I know I don't.
I hope this will be one of the matters addressed in Vegas.
- billn