On Thu, 14 Apr 2005, Bill Nash wrote:
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.
Speaking just for myself, I'd welcome discussion of operational and design issues specific to edge networks here, and newbie questions are useful as well. If those with experience don't share knowledge with those with less experience, we'll just have the same mistakes being made over and over again. Most of what gets strongly objected to falls into the categories of either petty arguments, stuff that has nothing to do with network operations, or the extreme hostility that seems to be consistently generated by a few topics. If people consistently asked three questions before they posted, "is it polite?", "does it have to do with network operations?", and "will this be interesting to some portion of the NANOG readership?", I think we'd be in fine shape. -Steve