Looking at the recent drop in list traffic which coincides with Martin Hannigan's campaign of stern warning letters to various people, I wonder whether things are heading in the right direction.
Will NANOG become a better list with a team of fascist police officers scrutinizing every posting? http://www.infiltrated.net/nanogpolice.jpg Or would it flourish better with a team of gardeners intent on cultivating a healthy discussion? I remember a session that I attended back at ONE ISPCON in 1996, the first ISP conference that Jack Rickard operated. There was someone there from Prodigy, a very successful social networking blogging service although they didn't call it that. They had many forums, each one focussed on some area of interest, and people participated by reading and posting in these forums. Each forum was managed by one or more sysops (what we would call moderators today) and the site's revenue depended on having healthy traffic levels. Prodigy put a lot of effort into building up user participation at a time when the huge buzz and marketing push of the Internet did not yet exist. The ONE ISPCON presenter was telling us their secret of success and that was the fact that they CULTIVATED sysops and those sysops CULTIVATED users. They actively attempted to ensure that there was a sufficient volume of relevant discussion as well as blocking abusive users. In other words, they approached their forums as a team of gardeners. I think that the current NANOG SC et al. are unfortunately headed down the path of policing which may very well reduce the weeds in the garden, but will not necessarily increase the garden's yield. When you damage the roots of your crop by forcibly yanking out weeds, then yield suffers. When you make it hard for weeds to grow by nipping them in the bud early, and gently, then yield prospers. Note that the NANOG Program Committee does seem to take the approach of cultivating in managing the NANOG meetings. This makes the contrast with the list all the more stark. Again, I don't have any answers. I'm just asking questions. But I'm curious whether anyone has considered this analogy as an approach to the issue, or whether anyone has looked to other historical reference points when developing the plans for managing the NANOG list. --Michael Dillon _______________________________________________ Nanog-futures mailing list Nanog-futures@nanog.org http://mailman.nanog.org/mailman/listinfo/nanog-futures
