Administrivia: A note on moderation and thanks

["Kenneth R. van Wyk" <Ken () KRvW com>]

Greetings all,

First off, thanks to all that responded privately or publicly to my request 
for input re an upcoming TechTV interview.  FWIW, I also asked a similar 
question to a group of anti-virus folks that I know and, not surprisingly, 
got a pretty broad range of answers.  (I'm scheduled to be on "Call for 
Help", taping on 7 April.  My TiVo believes that the show will air on 12 
April.  Should be fun.)

Secondly, I wanted to take a moment to say a couple things about the 
moderating that I do here, which I feel is particularly topical in light of 
the recent thread on securing a virtual hosted environment.  A few of you 
asked (online and off) what the thread had to do with "secure coding", and I 
wanted to respond to that.

On one level, you're absolutely right -- it has nothing to do with "coding".  
I do feel, though, that it has much to do with software security in a larger 
sense.  I've long believed that an application isn't secure until it is 
deployed/integrated into a safe operating environment, and I believe that 
discussions of "how do I set up my app to run safely in my environment" to be 
well within the scope of this list.  At least to a point, and I certainly 
realize that that is a somewhat slippery slope...

...which brings me to my last topic (for those that haven't already pressed 
the delete key ;-).  Moderation.  As some of you know, I've moderated a 
couple of discussion groups for some time, having launched the old 
VIRUS-L/comp.virus group back in 1988.  My approach then and now has been to 
allow people to speak their minds, by and large -- within the fairly broad 
bounds of the group's charter.  For example, when a thread digresses too far 
(in my view), I prefer to accept the last posting(s) and _ask_ the 
contributors to let the thread die.  I prefer this somewhat light-handed 
approach, since I like to let people speak up and want to encourage that.  I 
have near zero tolerance for incivility, but that still leaves a whole lot of 
leeway.

As always, I am open to your feedback, good, bad, or otherwise.

Cheers,

Ken van Wyk
-- 
KRvW Associates, LLC
http://www.KRvW.com