What remains, and when was the last time anyone talked about it? It seems like any topic that has been brought up over the last few months, SOMEONE has complained (usually quite loudly) that "this isn't the place for that topic of discussion".
In the last week, there have been discussions of telco issues (the "DACS failure" thread) and tools (the "System And Network Monitoring" thread) that seem to have been generally received as on-topic. For all the topics that are regarded as being on-topic, there's a common aspect: they affect multiple providers. Telco issues. Tool issues. Vendor issues. Natural disaster issues. A given provider may have problems in their interior that affects lots of users, but that's still a problem with a single provider and not necessarily relevant to the list; one might consider exceptions like when the host is a root name server, but user complaints that they can't reach a web server are not well-received because there's an obvious place (a NOC) to go to report the problem to people who are paid to do something about it.
Judging by the number of topics that have actually NOT received the vocal opposition (a paltry few that they were), it seems the mailing list should amount to like, what?, two messages a month maybe?
I'd MUCH prefer two meaningful messages to a dozen complaints from people who don't know how to contact a NOC or configure DNS.
Something's not right with that...
Something's *definitely* not right with NANOG being used as a substitute for contacting a NOC for problems that are plainly within the interior of a single network. Interprovider issues that require cooperation between providers have generally been better received by the list than complaints from *users* that they can't reach a web server. Stephen