Re: a question of charter

["Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr () nfr net>]

[I won't post follow-ups to this message]

        Thanks to all who responded to my mail on this topic! I'm
sorry I couldn't respond personally to each message -- there were
too many of them.

        The strong majority of the responses favored that the list:
        -> Continue to permit broad-scope discussion of topics
        related to firewalls and advanced security
        -> Be more aggressively moderated to trim less substantive
        postings
        -> Continue to be filtered to reduce the number of basic
        introductory type postings

        I short, approximately the same but with a bit more enforcement
of relevance, brevity, and content. I've been instituting that posting
policy over the last week or so -- those of you who haven't posted a
"me too!" article, or something badly written, or with lots of inclusions,
will not notice this. :)  I've been bouncing a number of postings for:
        -> Bad ratio of quoted text to new content
        -> Cross-posting to firewalls@greatcircle [because when there
        is a crosspost I have to wade through TONS of spam directed
        back]
        -> Thread errors [Some postings have started a new thread
        that is worthwhile in the context of an old one. I bounce these
        to the poster and ask that the poster resubmit it to start a new
        thread]
        -> Already discussed content -- if a thread is declared "dead"
        then I will not post more to that thread. In fact, if someone
        tries to resurrect that thread they will get a note saying in
        effect, "look at the archives. that topic is covered there."
        -> Talking too much -- too many postings hitting the queue at
        once will simply be delayed and trickled out over time [I have
        already done this once, but Interop helped]
        -> Too much of one voice -- individuals will not be allowed
        to dominate the discussion through volume. Quality, not
        quantity.

For those of you who wonder about these things, I have bounced
about 10 "I am on vacation" mails, 30 "Get rich fast" mails, 30
postings that didn't meet quality expectations, a bunch of
miss-postings and duplicates, and about 10 dead threads. So
there *IS* some filtering going on here! I hope it shows! :)

My feeling is that this experiment has been working fairly well.
> From my standpoint, moderating the list is actually LESS effort
than wading through the spam, irrelevance, and flames! It's
easier on my blood pressure, too! :)

As always, comments and suggestions are welcomed!!!

mjr.
--
Marcus J. Ranum, CEO, Network Flight Recorder, Inc.
work - http://www.nfr.net
home - http://www.clark.net/pub/mjr