[please note - followups are set to nanog-futures, this doesn't belong to nanog-list. respect the reply-to header and reply to nanog-futures ] On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Deepak Jain wrote:
However, a tremendous amount of time is wasted just by discussing these sorts of "small" problems. Plenty of people contribute to nanog daily and don't feel the need to complain about it. It seems to me, the ones who contribute in spurts sometimes separated by months seem to have to less to complain about. a) Talking often is not a measure of contribution to community.
b) If we tolerate the annoying bounce emails, it doesn't mean we shouldn't fix the issue.
That said, a very simple way to handle it is to separate your mail (whether its procmail, a separate mailbox, a + rule in your name, or what have you) to automatically catch these "horrible" autoresponders into a box that doesn't clutter your critical mail. I think that's how most of us do it.
I think someone suggests the above everytime a discussion comes up. In the spirit of "a very simple solution", everyone can be their own dictator of their own mailbox -- they don't need to protect the rest of the list, or develop a consensus for change. Just fix it for yourself. This is a time-honored NANOG tradition, at least when it comes to email. In the sense that a time-honored network engineering tradition is "let others figure out how to deal with my broken routers/email clients/etc", maybe. But I don't think its a good tradition to keep ;)
-alex