So, as an exercise in self-flagellation, I went through the messages in the thread that began with: Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 19:42:02 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Sprickman <spork@inch.com> To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: FDDI or 100Mb Ethernet My principal observation was that collectively, we did a pretty poor job of utilizing the resources of this list. The original question asked seems relatively reasonable (though it's really related to LAN design/engineering and not the operational internet per se, but it's at least a question a number of small operators are asking, and is even similar to some that a number of big operators may be asking themselves). Our first response, from Kent, less-than-helpfully notes the existance of gigabit ethernet (way outside the bounds of the initial question) and suggests that the concurrent thread about MTUs is not to be payed attention to. Failure to address the initial query and failure to say *WHY* the MTU thread isn't worth listening to make this a poor response. Next, we get a reply from the oringal querrant, indicating he received 30 replies in favor of Fast Ethernet, and one in favor of FDDI, and thanking the list. While summarization to the list is appreciated, this level of summary is *NOT* useful. As should be grossly apparent to anyone who reads this list for even a short period of time, the quantity of a response has no discernable relationship to it's quality. If you ask a question and get a significant number of personal replies, summarization to the list is always good. But what's important to summarize is THE THINGS THAT PEOPLE HAVE SAID, not how many people have said them. The reasons why people indicated that Fast Ethernet might be preferable to FDDI in this particular scenario are what is important, not the number of people who may have had the Right Answer for the Wrong Reasons, or the Wrong Answer for the Right Reasons (or even those rare minority with the Right Answer for the Right Reasons)! Then we have a few replies that attempt to provide answers and provide small technical reasons why one of the choices is better. These are ok, except it seems likely these people didn't read the message from the original querrant indicating he'd already gotten "his answer". Either that, or they somehow felt that the answers he'd come up with, or the reasons given, were inadequate. Not that anyone bothered to say that, of course. I have difficulty seeing how the "Beowulf Project"'s choice of a LAN medium has much to do with the question at hand, or even closely related ones. But of course, I didn't slog through the entire web page that was cited. I skimmed it briefly. Presumably if one is going to cite a web page that's not directly relevent to the question asked, one should bother to be specific about what one is referring to and the relevence, if it's not completely obvious. Most service providers aren't building hypercubes... Not to mention that most web pages are ephermeral and the nanog mail archive is not, so a quotation rather than a citation is always nice. Some more commentary that fits the above classifications, and then a short anecdote about the nature of cascading layer two hardware in an enterprise network environment. Surely irrelevent to NANOG, but probably amusing to some. Personally I think it worsens the signal-to-noise ratio, especially when a thread has gone to pieces like this one has. But perhaps my sense of humor was removed at too early an age. Oh yes, then we have Paul and Sean off talking about migration paths, with cisco BFRs and OC3 connections. Proabably not very relevent to the initial query, but I suppose someone is curious, so why not re-iterate a discussion that everyone could find in the archives. But wait, then a segue into MPLS, the favored nanog discussion topic of the year, I'm sure. All-in-all, certainly not the worst thread we've had in a while. But well-managed, structured, something we can point to as a community and say "Yeah, we did a good job answering this question and producing thought-provoking discussion"? I think not. I suppose my cynicism must have reached new heights if this is what I'm bothering to waste my time on. Still, perhaps this missive will make people think just a little bit harder about the things they're going to say; if so, even if it wounds characters, it will have served its purpose. --jhawk