On Thu, 14 Apr 2005, Scott Grayban wrote:
I am new to this field and I joined here to learn more. I certainly have heard my share of bashing from linux forums.
The more bashing I hear here the less I want to ask a question here. I'm not stupid but I am worried that one question might spark a rash of flames back at me.
This is a newbies point of view.
I can't say this was wholly unexpected, with the major change in moderation the list has undergone. On a much smaller scale, I think some of what we're seeing is the same behavior you'd see in any chunk of populace that had been languishing under strict rule for a long period, to suddenly find it lifted. A new moderation team is in place, but hasn't quite gotten to the point where consistent, effective moderation is a palpable force within the list. In the interim, there's riots and looting and all manner of untoward behavior as people stretch their legs and find the edges of the new structure. Having been moderated myself in this past week, I'm glad to see that people have one, gotten past any trepidation of posting, and two, that the new moderation crew is getting up to speed. The newbie perspective does bring up a couple points that have been made in past arguments, in that there are a lot of nanog readers who aren't major backbone engineers, crusty wizened protocol authors, grand poobah service providers, or ex-MIT building hackers. Some readers are tackling problems on a day to day basis that are old hat for the seasoned NANOG denizens, and are bereft of the major benefit nanog provides (conversation with peers) because some of those problems have been argued to death and are now taboo. In most cases, the simple answer is to read the faq[1] or search the archives. For relatively newer folks though, sheer lack of experience will often cough up the caveat of not knowing what to look for. At the risk of triggering either a stupid argument or a landslide into bureaucracy, might I suggest the formation of nanog-isp as a narrower forum for non-backbone providers tackling operational and design issues specific to edge networks? Having learned (and missed) fundamentals by working completely on my own with various projects, I can safely say there's no substitute for active peer review and conversation. Either list itself is nothing without participants. Many complaints about the main list itself have to do with off-topic pursuits, fear of posting, or the inability to ignore a thread that's of no interest. I do think there's a large audience to nanog that would benefit from a more active forum dedicated to their specific issues. It's just an idea, and I could, of course, be completely wrong. - billn [1] http://www.nanog.org/listfaq.html#questions