> But, I don't think any reasonable amount of enforcement is > going to solve what I perceive as the biggest cause of the > current low signal to noise ratio on the mailing list. At > ~10,000 people with posting access, the list is just too big, > and there are too many views among those subscribers about > what the list should be. A tiny percentage of people who > just want to talk about random stuff is still a whole lot of > people, who can make a lot of noise. Groups of people who > think the list exists to discuss their area of expertise can > quickly make enough noise to thoroughly annoy people with > different specialties, who think the list is for their > subject area instead. I really hope that as part of the > mailing list repair process, some further thought will be > given to breaking it up into smaller lists for discussions of > different subjects. That way we could have some clear > guidelines on what is and isn't acceptable to post to each > list, rather than getting into endless arguments about the > purpose of the One True NANOG List.
Personally, I think that all posting access to the list should be removed. Yes, nobody should be able to post messages to the list. Instead, posting would be via a blog website, and the blog messages would then be echoed into various NANOG mailing lists based on which blog category was being used. Subscribers could then construct their own personal NANOG list by subscribing to the blog categories that they are interested in. Threading would work very well since on a blog, you have to identify the thread before you post. There are literally hundreds of blogging software packages out there, many of them blog construction tool kits with dozens of plugins available. Given the fact that the list runs on Mailman which is written in Python, I suggest that folks have a look at this list of Python blogging software: http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonBlogSoftware My sense is that PyBlosxom and the Django-based stuff are the more popular. It's too late to do this as a Summer Of Code project but the same principal could be applied, i.e. find a university student, put them together with a technical mentor, and give them access to the server needed to test and trial the blog. If the SC isn't interested in testing this right now, then I suggest that the new MLC give serious consideration to taking this on as a project. --Michael Dillon _______________________________________________ Nanog-futures mailing list Nanog-futures@nanog.org http://mailman.nanog.org/mailman/listinfo/nanog-futures
