One of the biggest issues with the list as I've seen from time to time from my perspective, is the definition of "operations". So on a quick breakdown of the logical definition of NANOG, I derive "Operations of the North American Network". The problem with this stems from far too many bastardizing their own definition of what it should be.
Please don't contribute to the bastardization. Section 3 of the NANOG charter states: The purpose of NANOG is to provide forums in the North American region for education and the sharing of knowledge for the Internet operations community. You can read the full charter here: http://www.nanog.org/charter.html By your definition, Cat's recent request for outage information about Telehouse North would be off-topic. But according to the NANOG FAQ here: http://www.nanog.org/listfaq.html outages are on topic. Obviously, network infrastructure tends to span political borders and geographic borders, therefore it is not unusual that Cat has an infrastructure issue in Europe to deal with. On your first point, the fuzziness and lack of clarity of what network operations issues belong on this list, I agree. The FAQ is never posted on the list so it has become an obscure document hidden away on a little-used website. It needs to be promoted more and I think it needs to be updated to communicate more clearly.
These are off-topic but I wouldn't trade em for the world. I've learned much from them, as have I from all sorts of posts on topic or not.
I agree with you. Unfortunately some old-timers would rather see a return to the old days when network ops and engineering was an obscure passtime only understood by those who knew the secret handshake and were admitted to the inner circle. They forget that NANOG's major role has been in educating the new people who have flooded into the net ops community as the Internet grew and grew and grew. --Michael Dillon