From owner-nanog@merit.edu Tue Mar 15 14:28:29 2005 To: Robert Bonomi <bonomi@mail.r-bonomi.com> Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: sorbs.net From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 15:28:17 -0500
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:42:24 CST, Robert Bonomi said:
As with any other 'voluntary use' blocklist, it's "clout" is only as good as the number of people using it. If serious questions arose as to the 'integrity' of the list, or the list operator, the vast majority of the mail-server operators using it would *stop* doing so. And any lack of integrity would be a moot issue, since 'practically nobody' would still be using it. It is _textbook_perfect_ "self regulation" at work.
This is, of course, making the rather big assumption that the person who decided to use said blocklist:
a) was fully cognizant of the list's goals and policies when they chose to use it.
nope.
*and* b) is willing and able to track deviations on an ongoing basis.
Yup. That _is_ an implicit part of *any* filtering/blocking job -- and many other tasks as well. That you _check_ on an ongoing basis, to make sure that the automation *is* doing what you "think" it is doing.
*and* c) whoever replaces them is also able to do so.
If they aren't competent to do the job, they shouldn't *have* the job. If management doesn't know what all the job requirements are, that is managements failing, and they _deserve_ the consequences thereof. <wry grin>
If it was in fact "textbook perfect", we'd never hear about stuff breaking when a block list goes belly up with six month's warning, and people *still* being surprised when suddenly everything returns 127.0.0.2 and a lot of mail goes kaboing.
Beg to differ. "textbook perfect" self-regulation means that when the list starts returning excessive numbers of false positives, that 'practically everybody' _stops_using_it_. And in fairly short order. Which is, in fact, precisely what DID happen. The list operator was relying on the effectiveness of said "self regulation" mechanism to "get the word out" to those who had _not_ heard about the shutdown from other sources.