RE: Agenda so far for NANOG33

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

Susan,

I think the NANOG community as a whole is looking for more information to be
put out ahead of time regarding this event.

The information requested from Alex's post today is what we are most after:

Regarding http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0501/coordination.html -- can someone
comment on who will from MERIT/NANOG will be present, and what the
moderation will be? What is the intended agenda for this meeting?

In addition to that:

Also, what are the expected outcomes of this meeting?

Answers to these questions will help your community best make traveling and
scheduling arrangements.

Thanks,

Chris Malayter
TDS Telecom - Network Services
Data Network Engineering
chris.malayter@tdstelecom.com
Phone: (608) 664-4878
FAX: (608) 664-4644

2

The information requested from Alex's post today is what we are most after:

Regarding http://www.nanog.org/mtg-0501/coordination.html -- can someone
comment on who will from MERIT/NANOG will be present, and what the
moderation will be? What is the intended agenda for this meeting?

My boss Betty Burke will represent Merit/NANOG, and members of the NANOG
program committee will be on hand as well. We're still in the process of
arranging moderators. The main agenda items are:

     1. Merit's role in coordinating NANOG
     2. How the Program Committee reviews proposals and selects presentations
     3. Community concerns about the NANOG email list.

Betty will cover the first item, Steve Feldman from the program committee
the 2nd, and the moderators the third. (BTW, Betty's been coordinating
Merit's holiday move to our newly constructed building, so she may not see
your mail for a day or so.)

Also, what are the expected outcomes of this meeting?

We can't predict outcomes until we hear from you folks - that's the goal
of the meeting, to hear any and all concerns about moderation of the NANOG
list, selection of talks for the meetings, and whatever else is on your
mind. We'll then take your input back to Merit and the program committee
and suggest some potential solutions.

3

Also, what are the expected outcomes of this meeting?

We can't predict outcomes until we hear from you folks - that's the goal
of the meeting, to hear any and all concerns about moderation of the NANOG
list, selection of talks for the meetings, and whatever else is on your
mind. We'll then take your input back to Merit and the program committee
and suggest some potential solutions.

At the risk of being a caustic agitator, I should imagine the outcomes would include:
- A change of moderation policy and practices for the mailing list.
- A change of moderators for the mailing list.
- A change of venue for the mailing list.
- Nothing.

At the minimum, one would hope to see:
- Periodic reminders of what's on topic and what isn't.
- A working warning system for repeat short-term offenders.
- Increased visibility into the why's of sanctions applied to productive clueful posters.
- Actual responses to direct queries regarding policy and actions.

From the dearth of emails sent by the various folks who crawled out of the

woodwork with denigrating remarks about what I could reasonably expect with my direct request for moderator comment on ratification of the list's charter, I'd say this last item is the most significant. I am, in fact, still waiting, as many people predicted I would be. I realize I may seem the interloper on this subject, as a read-only non-expert for most of the common discussions, but at the very minimum I would 'reasonably expect' the professional courtesy of a response, even if it had been as minimal as "This can be discussed at the next meeting."

I'd rather be blown off with some well placed smoke or sunshine than be made to think I'm null routing my own email.

- billn

4

Spam represents a significant percentage of email traffic, and its delivery is increasingly via trojaned dsl/broadband devices. Even spam delivered from quasi-legitimate sources is usually an abuse of resources that some NSP/ISP is paying for. 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.

- billn

5

I don't think spam is considered off-topic because anyone thinks it's
irrelevant, but because it's such a vast category by itself that it
could easily swallow the list whole. There are already many lists
just dealing with spam and/or individual subtopics of it.

I think it's a matter of trying to find a decent balance between the
convenience of rounding up all the relevant topics into one list and
the flexibility of allowing people to opt into the topics they want by
choosing various lists.

Having said that, I think that individual spam-related operational
disruptions, mailbombings which have a significant[*] impact, etc
are appropriate, so long as they don't develop into entire discussions
on the topic of spam as a whole (which would fit better on another list
IMHO).

-c

[*] - Now we can have a sidebar discussion on what constitutes a
significant impact...

6

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

7

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.

But there's a lack of operational expertise there. Lots of people
fascinated by email headers and so on, but far fewer with experience
deploying large systems or handling security related issues.

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.

That sounds like the problem is people who can't treat a mailing list
professionally and maintain enough personal restraint to keep the S/N
above water rather than an issue with one partcular subject of
conversation.

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.

For people who want to bemoan spam and and hunt spammers, sure. For people
looking for answers to operational problems that just happen to have some
relationship to bulk email... I'm less convinced.

Cheers,
  Steve

8

JC Dill wrote:

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.

From a KISS perspective, what denotes spam is, imho, off-topic for this list.

How to handle spam or the impact of spam is operational and is relevant to this list regardless as to whether it's on spam-l or not.

9

I second this request.

From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu]

On

Behalf Of Bill Nash
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 11:51 AM
To: Steve Sobol
Cc: Susan Harris; nanog@merit.edu; Betty Burke
Subject: Proposed list charter/AUP change?

> Susan keeps on claiming spam is offtopic for Nanog, yet

the

AUP/Charter/FAQ
> don't mention spam other than telling us not to ask "I'm

being spammed, how
> can I make it stop?"
>
> If it's flat-out offtopic, no matter what, or if the
majority of list members
> don't want to talk about it on the list, why hasn't the

FAQ

been updated? Or
> does Merit just want us to try to guess what is

offtopic?

>

Spam represents a significant percentage of email traffic,

and its

delivery is increasingly via trojaned dsl/broadband

devices.

Even spam
delivered from quasi-legitimate sources is usually an

abuse

of resources
that some NSP/ISP is paying for. 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

10

One focus of thsi meeting must be that it should not degenerate into a
"let's all bash on the current moderator" argument - that will,
ultimately, not be very productive.

The issue on nanog is not spam discussions - it is an apparently
widely held perception among list members that the current moderation
of the list in an attempt to maintain signal to noise ratios is heavy
handed.

I've seen other lists where their admins have tried this approach - it
has, so far, not worked at all on any of the lists that it has been
tried on .. and to add to the fun, it tends to generate "uncivil
disobedience".

Like for example Randy Bush getting his posting rights revoked for
cross posting an email about an anycast experiment to nanog and
various other operator lists, with the To: header reading, in part -
"ops sheep willing to be censored by a non op" <nanog@nanog.org>

Some would, rightly, say that Randy was wearing a giant "kick me" sign
when he posted that - but it has to be pointed out that this sort of
reaction is inevitable on mailing lists where the list admin exercises
his/her moderation powers beyond a certain extent in an effort to
enforce SNR on the list.

As spam-l keeps getting cited in this thread, please allow me to point
out that spam-l has a set of topics that posters have to prefix to
their posts, so that they can be categorized, and either read or not
read by list subscribers, who moreover get to decide just what list
topics they want to sign up to.

Nanog could have a set of similar topics - [OP-SEC] for operational
security related issues, [OP-SPAM] for when members really do want to
discuss spam issues that they consider operational, etc.

These are all ideas, though - what is needed urgently is for this
special meeting not to end up as a repetition of "the moderator is
heavy handed", "list members always wander off topic, and we have to
head them off somehow", and instead to develop on more productive
lines.

--srs

ps - finally, someone may want to suggest a slight change to point #4
in this slide, linked from the nanog AUP, to take into account current
list (non) membership:
http://www.nanog.org/mtg-9811/ppt/labovit/sld013.htm

11

And at least some mailing list software (LSoft's Listserv product) even
allows subscribers to say "I only want mail for OP-SEC and OP-PEERING",
and they'll literally never see the others. The SPAM-L list uses it
heavily, with a fairly extensive set of topics defined - MEDIA for
threads relating to spam-in-the-news, BLOCK for discussions of whether a
given site deserves being plonked in a block list, and of course HELP,
MISC, and HUMOR (the latter usually including sightings of egregeously
incompetent spammers).

(Quite possibly other list manager packages do similar things, but I'm not
familiar enough with the admin side of anything besides LSoft's stuff to comment)...