[Outages-discussion] Mod: Clarification on Scope

[Charles Sprickman]

> On Mar 9, 2017, at 6:10 PM, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> 
> [ Apologies; it's been an unusually busy week; I just got back to the list ]
> 
> [ Please direct all replies to -discussion; not the main list.  If you feel 
> the need to reply and aren't on the -discussion list, it's easy to subscribe. ]
> 
> <moderator>
> There's been some question again lately about what's in-scope for this list.
> 
> Obviously, that include things which are directly related to the networking
> of the Internet and of other major communications networks; notification of
> last night's AT&T 911 outage was in-scope, for example.
> 
> It includes backbone links and routers, IX problems, and problems with 
> upper-layer services that apply to a large number of end-sites, like DDoS
> attacks on Cloudflare, Akamai, etc.
> 
> We've also defined it to apply to outages and sub-outage problems (whether
> functional or regional) in endpoint services, like AWS, Azure and other
> cloud providers, and to large end-user services whether they host there or
> in other places, like Netflix.
> 
> The goal of including things like this, often considered out of scope in 
> other venues, is to provide information to those who work at eyeball networks
> like cable ISPs or college resnets, and who might get a lot of support 
> calls on a Netflix outage, for example.
> 
> SUGGESTIONS:
> 
> It's been a tradition on both mailing lists and Usenet (remember Usenet?) for
> years and years that if you ask a question, you take the replies directly and
> summmarize, rather than inviting people to reply directly to the list or
> group.  This approach will serve us well here, too, I suspect.
> 
> I know that this list cannot be all things to all people, and that being useful
> to some will make it less useful to others, and there's not too much Virendra
> and I can do about that as moderators.  But, if possible, I'd like it if people 
> could tell *me* if things are getting out of hand, rather than each other.
> 
> I'm not always following the list myself, but I'm happy to step in if someone
> points out a problem -- I do try to look in at least once a day, but that's not
> always enough, clearly.
> 
> In any event: 
> 
> METOO and NOTME is almost always off-topic for the main list.
> 
> The NVIDIA service outage is probably not of sufficiently pervasive interest
> to be on-topic for the main list either; it's not going to generate lots of
> support inquiries *to network providers*, though people might scream at NVIDIA 
> themselves a bit. :-)
> 
> 911 was on-topic.
> 
> In my humble opinions.

In addition to the issues brought up above, it seems like the number of people posting vague “my cable is out” announcements without so much as a traceroute or anything keeps growing.  I understand that a regional Comcast or Charter outage is certainly noteworthy, but it seems like we get a number of reports that could simply be “have you tried turning it off and on again?” issues.

How can we gently discourage that sort of noise?  Personally, I think that if you can’t “show your work”, then you should not post, is that a fair rule of thumb?  It would also be nice if more people from larger networks actually posted directly rather than lurking and then chiming in to confirm a user report…

Charles
— 
Charles Sprickman
NetEng/SysAdmin
Bway.net - New York's Best Internet www.bway.net
spork at bway.net - 212.982.9800


> 
> Again, please direct further discussions about this to -discussions.  :-)
> 
> Cheers,
> -- jra
> </moderator>
> -- 
> Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
> Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
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