[admin] Using the NANOG list as a paging mechanism
Hi Folks, We'd like to politely note that paging each other on the list without content or context is generally off-topic. These messages are perceived by many as fragments that are not useful to the wider community. If you could provide some level of detail as to why you are using the list to reach someone, it would be much appreciated. There are many benefits to this approach including more eyes on the issue (and the message) as well as a faster MTTR. If the issue is not involving the public Internet, then it's probably safe to conclude that a private approach may be better. Best Regards, Martin Hannigan NANOG Mailing List Committee
I think the "page" is going to the list because the sender does not know the contact for the site, and the list provides a good way to find someone to handle the request... the intended recipient of the page being a north american network operator :) We could come up with a list or an updateable site, but it's bound to be abused and thus ignored, the same reason people arn't sending to abuse@ and postmaster@ in the first place. -Patrick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Hannigan" <hannigan@gmail.com> To: nanog@merit.edu Cc: "nanog-admin" <nanog-admin@nanog.org> Sent: Friday, January 4, 2008 2:42:13 PM (GMT-0800) America/Los_Angeles Subject: [admin] Using the NANOG list as a paging mechanism Hi Folks, We'd like to politely note that paging each other on the list without content or context is generally off-topic. These messages are perceived by many as fragments that are not useful to the wider community. If you could provide some level of detail as to why you are using the list to reach someone, it would be much appreciated. There are many benefits to this approach including more eyes on the issue (and the message) as well as a faster MTTR. If the issue is not involving the public Internet, then it's probably safe to conclude that a private approach may be better. Best Regards, Martin Hannigan NANOG Mailing List Committee
On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, Patrick Clochesy wrote:
I think the "page" is going to the list because the sender does not know the contact for the site, and the list provides a good way to find someone to handle the request... the intended recipient of the page being a north american network operator :)
We could come up with a list or an updateable site, but it's bound to be abused and thus ignored, the same reason people arn't sending to abuse@ and postmaster@ in the first place.
I think the reason such a site doesn't exist already is because it's a spam seed. Nanog lists are archived, aren't they? Searching for a user from a specific domain might net more immediate results, in some cases, provided the search result doesn't have a timestamp of 2005 or older. - billn
Patrick Clochesy <patrick@chegg.com> writes:
We could come up with a list or an updateable site, but it's bound to be abused and thus ignored, the same reason people arn't sending to abuse@ and postmaster@ in the first place.
If only there were some web site where someone could go to search for NOC contact info and update theirs if the current data is incomplete... http://puck.nether.net/netops/ ---rob
If only there were some web site where someone could go to search for NOC contact info and update theirs if the current data is incomplete...
Does not work ... when you try to add a listing: POSTed url: http://puck.nether.net/netops/admin-x.cgi returns: Your requested page was not found. Please visit our Main page to see a brief index of what we have here, with links to Network Operations and Sysmon, amongst other things.
"Martin Hannigan" <hannigan@gmail.com> writes:
We'd like to politely note that paging each other on the list without content or context is generally off-topic.
I understand the motivation, but I think the "paging" messages should be allowed. I've done it myself, in desperation after exhausting all other ways to find a needed contact. I don't think that the current rate of "desperately searching for contact at provider X" is impossibly high, and often this is the only way to find a contact you really, really need. Certainly people should be encouraged to try all other possibilities first, but what if you already have?
These messages are perceived by many as fragments that are not useful to the wider community.
Compared to most of the other traffic here, they're actually useful. The endless debates haven't helped me much over the years, but the couple of times I've really, really needed to find an appropriate contact and had no luck any other way, this list has come through for me.
If you could provide some level of detail as to why you are using the list to reach someone, it would be much appreciated.
In my own instances, posting private security related information to the internet seemed like a bad idea, so I must politely refuse. -- Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com
Normally these requests are looking for somebody who's operational and has a clue, and therefore aren't intended for me (:-), but IMHO they're_really_ not a problem. They're almost always short, and have Subject: lines that indicate what they're about, so it's easy to skip over them based on the Subject: line, and Gmail thinks I have 6.5GB of remaining quota space so it's not even worth the effort of deleting them. Sometimes they're even about issues like getting through the AOL email-rejection loop that are useful to multiple people. It's operational and de minimus.
They're almost always short, and have Subject: lines that indicate what they're about, so it's easy to skip over them based on the Subject: line, and Gmail thinks I have 6.5GB of remaining quota space so it's not even worth the effort of deleting them. Sometimes they're even about issues like getting through the AOL email-rejection loop that are useful to multiple people. It's operational and de minimus.
Its operational and de minimus and sometimes the most simple way to arrange something... e.g. a mail filter/blackhole and no obvious contact phone number (e.g. the remote website is affected by the blackhole, etc). This is not a suggestion that NANOG should be carte-blanche a paging service, but in the few cases it appears, it doesn't seem to be clue-deprived requests that often. Deepak Jain AiNET
On Jan 8, 2008 7:22 PM, Deepak Jain <deepak@ai.net> wrote:
They're almost always short, and have Subject: lines that indicate what they're about, so it's easy to skip over them based on the Subject: line, and Gmail thinks I have 6.5GB of remaining quota space so it's not even worth the effort of deleting them. Sometimes they're even about issues like getting through the AOL email-rejection loop that are useful to multiple people. It's operational and de minimus.
Its operational and de minimus and sometimes the most simple way to arrange something... e.g. a mail filter/blackhole and no obvious contact phone number (e.g. the remote website is affected by the blackhole, etc).
This is not a suggestion that NANOG should be carte-blanche a paging service, but in the few cases it appears, it doesn't seem to be clue-deprived requests that often.
Hi Deepak, Agreed, and both that are described contain content, or at least that's the way I'm reading your reply. We are specifically pointing out the paging messages that contain nothing but an empty request for "someone from xyz to contact $foo" for an unknown reason. I think it's fair for us to ask for some content if we're going to see these requests forwarded to ~9k users. Best Regards, Martin Hannigan NANOG MLC Member
participants (8)
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Bill Nash -
Bill Stewart -
C. Jon Larsen -
Deepak Jain -
Martin Hannigan -
Patrick Clochesy -
Perry E. Metzger -
Robert E. Seastrom