Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-27 Thread Martijn Schmidt via NANOG
Hi Cynthia,

A big seconded from me.. I got into the peering / interconnection community 
around 2014, and I was 25 or so at the time. Always enjoyed talking with the 
"older" generations at the events, the historical perspective and understanding 
that brings were very valuable to me in getting to the point where I am now.

As for mailing lists, I do lurk in a few of them, but I too find them a bit 
clunky. Are they better than captive communities, eg $social_media? Yes, I do 
think so. But not ideal either. :)

Best regards,
Martijn


From: NANOG  on behalf of 
Cynthia Revström via NANOG 
Sent: 27 March 2021 11:20
To: Valdis Klētnieks 
Cc: NANOG list 
Subject: Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) 
interactions.

(Not speaking for all younger people of course)

I often enjoy learning about issues in the past or why some decision was made 
the way it was.

Often this is best conveyed by people who have the context from having been 
involved at the time.

I have asked some people in the past for context to historical issues or 
decisions etc. (both in networking and other parts of tech)

(not directed at anyone specifically)
I think for the people who are concerned about the younger generations not 
having this knowledge, think of how to fix it rather than just giving up on the 
younger generation.

Sure not everyone will be interested in historical context, and certainly not 
in every topic, but some are.
I think connecting with the younger generations in order to answer these 
questions is a much better approach than blaming them for not wanting to use 
mailing lists or whatever.

Once again this was not directed at anyone specifically, just things I wanted 
to address from this thread as a whole.

-Cynthia

On Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:57 Valdis Klētnieks 
mailto:valdis.kletni...@vt.edu>> wrote:
On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:51:28 -0400, "Allen McKinley Kitchen (gmail)" said:
>  how I am called on by younger peers and can remember things that the kids 
> haven’t had time to learn.
>
> Now that last one has no real network application .. but it makes me feel 
> good.

Oh, there are *tons* of stuff that you can remember that the kids haven't
learned yet.  We just had a long thread about famous operational issues,
and I'm willing to bet that *none* of those ever got mentioned wherever
the kids went to school...


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-27 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/27/21 12:20, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:



(not directed at anyone specifically)
I think for the people who are concerned about the younger generations 
not having this knowledge, think of how to fix it rather than just 
giving up on the younger generation.


Sure not everyone will be interested in historical context, and 
certainly not in every topic, but some are.
I think connecting with the younger generations in order to answer 
these questions is a much better approach than blaming them for not 
wanting to use mailing lists or whatever.


In Africa, at least, there is still quite a lot of interest from many 
youth to get into the nuts & bolts of how to build large scale Internet 
networks. What needs to evolve is how we support their training, as the 
way it was done before is coming under pressure due to the disappearance 
of traditional hands-on labs, the older generation of teachers slowing 
down in life, the pressure from industry to build and operate networks 
with a GUI, the pressure from software and automation confusing network 
engineers about whether they need to be great at IS-IS or Python, e.t.c.


In the past year, we've found ways to virtualize the workshops and the 
labs, but also to virtualize the entire workshop over several days, and 
the signs are looking good for the evolution of how knowledge is 
transferred, in that respect.


Many thanks to the good folk at the NSRC for making stuff like this 
possible, for various regions around the world, especially the 
developing ones.


Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-27 Thread Cynthia Revström via NANOG
(Not speaking for all younger people of course)

I often enjoy learning about issues in the past or why some decision was
made the way it was.

Often this is best conveyed by people who have the context from having been
involved at the time.

I have asked some people in the past for context to historical issues or
decisions etc. (both in networking and other parts of tech)

(not directed at anyone specifically)
I think for the people who are concerned about the younger generations not
having this knowledge, think of how to fix it rather than just giving up on
the younger generation.

Sure not everyone will be interested in historical context, and certainly
not in every topic, but some are.
I think connecting with the younger generations in order to answer these
questions is a much better approach than blaming them for not wanting to
use mailing lists or whatever.

Once again this was not directed at anyone specifically, just things I
wanted to address from this thread as a whole.

-Cynthia

On Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 10:57 Valdis Klētnieks 
wrote:

> On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:51:28 -0400, "Allen McKinley Kitchen (gmail)" said:
> >  how I am called on by younger peers and can remember things that the
> kids haven’t had time to learn.
> >
> > Now that last one has no real network application .. but it makes me
> feel good.
>
> Oh, there are *tons* of stuff that you can remember that the kids haven't
> learned yet.  We just had a long thread about famous operational issues,
> and I'm willing to bet that *none* of those ever got mentioned wherever
> the kids went to school...
>


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-27 Thread Valdis Klētnieks
On Thu, 25 Mar 2021 12:51:28 -0400, "Allen McKinley Kitchen (gmail)" said:
>  how I am called on by younger peers and can remember things that the kids 
> haven’t had time to learn.
>
> Now that last one has no real network application .. but it makes me feel 
> good.

Oh, there are *tons* of stuff that you can remember that the kids haven't
learned yet.  We just had a long thread about famous operational issues,
and I'm willing to bet that *none* of those ever got mentioned wherever
the kids went to school...


pgpyMyDrr85q8.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-25 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/25/21 18:51, Allen McKinley Kitchen (gmail) wrote:


And to push this point further:

I don’t claim to speak for all graybeards, but now that I am past the era of 
enjoying my kids' school activities, and resting on an empty nest, I once again 
don’t mind being involved in what younger engineers are doing far beyond “work 
hours”. There are a few reasons for that: it turns out that this is when “the 
kids” tend to be doing the most interesting and boundary-pushing work, and the 
observations that an old-head can offer are sometimes welcome; also, that lets 
me have a vital window on what they're doing and how it may affect the world as 
we know it; and finally, rather than being jealous of my time, my beloved 
speaks of being proud of how I am called on by younger peers and can remember 
things that the kids haven’t had time to learn.

Now that last one has no real network application .. but it makes me feel good.

So .. ages and stages, +1.


What impresses me about the kids and their approach to problems is that 
all they want to do is solve them (I'm talking 12 - 20 years old). They 
have zero time for job titles, who has the billions or all the trappings 
of "success".


They are the ones who keep me up at night, because they will, 
inadvertently, drive the success of what one thinks their business is about.


Mark.



Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-25 Thread Allen McKinley Kitchen (gmail)
But obviously my experience and age has failed to break me of top-posting .. 
sorry!

..Allen

> On Mar 25, 2021, at 12:51, Allen McKinley Kitchen (gmail) 
>  wrote:
> 
> And to push this point further:
> 
> I don’t claim to speak for all graybeards, but now that I am past the era of 
> enjoying my kids' school activities, and resting on an empty nest, I once 
> again don’t mind being involved in what younger engineers are doing far 
> beyond “work hours”. There are a few reasons for that: it turns out that this 
> is when “the kids” tend to be doing the most interesting and boundary-pushing 
> work, and the observations that an old-head can offer are sometimes welcome; 
> also, that lets me have a vital window on what they're doing and how it may 
> affect the world as we know it; and finally, rather than being jealous of my 
> time, my beloved speaks of being proud of how I am called on by younger peers 
> and can remember things that the kids haven’t had time to learn. 
> 
> Now that last one has no real network application .. but it makes me feel 
> good. 
> 
> So .. ages and stages, +1.
> 
> ..Allen
> 
>> On Mar 25, 2021, at 00:26, Mark Tinka  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
 On 3/24/21 17:59, Seth Mattinen wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I think age has something to do with that too, and I don't mean this as 
>>> offensive at all because I've been there done that, but lack of other 
>>> things going on in life. When I was 19 I had no problem being available on 
>>> my cell phone at all times. I'd do weekends and nights with joy. I'd 
>>> volunteer to take all the extra projects the older people didn't want. I'd 
>>> make up projects just because. I'd respond to messages/emails/whatever 
>>> immediately if I was awake no matter what time it was. Hell, I used to 
>>> respond to NOC stuff while I was sitting in class rather than wait until 
>>> the end.
>>> 
>>> Now that I'm older and have things like a house and family, I slowly 
>>> shifted to not wanting to be available constantly. I'd rather work on some 
>>> house project, bake a cake, watch TV with the wife, or play games I missed 
>>> out on when I was "busy" with stuff that hardly seems important now. I 
>>> don't want my life to be a slave to apps or jump at every notification I 
>>> get. I have a laptop just in case I need one, but my primary work area is 
>>> my desk with desktop computer. When I step away from my desk I'm really 
>>> stepping away, not transitioning to the sofa or dinner table to keep 
>>> working on a laptop (something I did in my 20's). Now if someone messages 
>>> me and I don't think it's time critical I'll get back to it when I feel 
>>> like it. If it's emergency pick up the phone and dial a voice call: if it's 
>>> not worth that much effort, it's not that important. I don't want to end up 
>>> divorced or have a contentious home life because I can't separate work from 
>>> the wife and kids.
>>> 
>>> So the way I see it there will *always* be a general disconnect in how the 
>>> younger and older groups prefer to interact because they're simply at 
>>> completely different stages in their lives.
>> 
>> 100%.
>> 
>> Mark.
>> 


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-25 Thread Allen McKinley Kitchen (gmail)
And to push this point further:

I don’t claim to speak for all graybeards, but now that I am past the era of 
enjoying my kids' school activities, and resting on an empty nest, I once again 
don’t mind being involved in what younger engineers are doing far beyond “work 
hours”. There are a few reasons for that: it turns out that this is when “the 
kids” tend to be doing the most interesting and boundary-pushing work, and the 
observations that an old-head can offer are sometimes welcome; also, that lets 
me have a vital window on what they're doing and how it may affect the world as 
we know it; and finally, rather than being jealous of my time, my beloved 
speaks of being proud of how I am called on by younger peers and can remember 
things that the kids haven’t had time to learn. 

Now that last one has no real network application .. but it makes me feel good. 

So .. ages and stages, +1.

..Allen

> On Mar 25, 2021, at 00:26, Mark Tinka  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On 3/24/21 17:59, Seth Mattinen wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> I think age has something to do with that too, and I don't mean this as 
>> offensive at all because I've been there done that, but lack of other things 
>> going on in life. When I was 19 I had no problem being available on my cell 
>> phone at all times. I'd do weekends and nights with joy. I'd volunteer to 
>> take all the extra projects the older people didn't want. I'd make up 
>> projects just because. I'd respond to messages/emails/whatever immediately 
>> if I was awake no matter what time it was. Hell, I used to respond to NOC 
>> stuff while I was sitting in class rather than wait until the end.
>> 
>> Now that I'm older and have things like a house and family, I slowly shifted 
>> to not wanting to be available constantly. I'd rather work on some house 
>> project, bake a cake, watch TV with the wife, or play games I missed out on 
>> when I was "busy" with stuff that hardly seems important now. I don't want 
>> my life to be a slave to apps or jump at every notification I get. I have a 
>> laptop just in case I need one, but my primary work area is my desk with 
>> desktop computer. When I step away from my desk I'm really stepping away, 
>> not transitioning to the sofa or dinner table to keep working on a laptop 
>> (something I did in my 20's). Now if someone messages me and I don't think 
>> it's time critical I'll get back to it when I feel like it. If it's 
>> emergency pick up the phone and dial a voice call: if it's not worth that 
>> much effort, it's not that important. I don't want to end up divorced or 
>> have a contentious home life because I can't separate work from the wife and 
>> kids.
>> 
>> So the way I see it there will *always* be a general disconnect in how the 
>> younger and older groups prefer to interact because they're simply at 
>> completely different stages in their lives.
> 
> 100%.
> 
> Mark.
> 


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-25 Thread Michael Thomas



On 3/24/21 5:57 PM, Bryan Fields wrote:

On 3/24/21 8:44 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:

FWIW, nanog doesn't alter
messages. All lists have the option to follow suit.

It does.  There's a setting in mailman that's enabled for the nanog list.

dmarc_moderation_action (privacy): Action to take when anyone posts to the
list from a domain with a DMARC Reject/Quarantine Policy.

It's set to Munge From.

So if your domain had a reject policy on DMARC, nanog will munge the from:
header to be 'Your Name via NANOG'.

Yes, the IETF list does that, for example. But NANOG's just not 
modifying anything is better, IMO.


But the larger point is that people should set p=reject and put the 
burden on mailing lists to adapt.


Mike



Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/24/21 17:59, Seth Mattinen wrote:



I think age has something to do with that too, and I don't mean this 
as offensive at all because I've been there done that, but lack of 
other things going on in life. When I was 19 I had no problem being 
available on my cell phone at all times. I'd do weekends and nights 
with joy. I'd volunteer to take all the extra projects the older 
people didn't want. I'd make up projects just because. I'd respond to 
messages/emails/whatever immediately if I was awake no matter what 
time it was. Hell, I used to respond to NOC stuff while I was sitting 
in class rather than wait until the end.


Now that I'm older and have things like a house and family, I slowly 
shifted to not wanting to be available constantly. I'd rather work on 
some house project, bake a cake, watch TV with the wife, or play games 
I missed out on when I was "busy" with stuff that hardly seems 
important now. I don't want my life to be a slave to apps or jump at 
every notification I get. I have a laptop just in case I need one, but 
my primary work area is my desk with desktop computer. When I step 
away from my desk I'm really stepping away, not transitioning to the 
sofa or dinner table to keep working on a laptop (something I did in 
my 20's). Now if someone messages me and I don't think it's time 
critical I'll get back to it when I feel like it. If it's emergency 
pick up the phone and dial a voice call: if it's not worth that much 
effort, it's not that important. I don't want to end up divorced or 
have a contentious home life because I can't separate work from the 
wife and kids.


So the way I see it there will *always* be a general disconnect in how 
the younger and older groups prefer to interact because they're simply 
at completely different stages in their lives.


100%.

Mark.



Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Bryan Fields
On 3/24/21 8:44 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
> FWIW, nanog doesn't alter 
> messages. All lists have the option to follow suit.

It does.  There's a setting in mailman that's enabled for the nanog list.

dmarc_moderation_action (privacy): Action to take when anyone posts to the
list from a domain with a DMARC Reject/Quarantine Policy.

It's set to Munge From.

So if your domain had a reject policy on DMARC, nanog will munge the from:
header to be 'Your Name via NANOG'.

-- 
Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice
http://bryanfields.net


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Michael Thomas



On 3/24/21 5:38 PM, Bryan Fields wrote:

On 3/23/21 8:04 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:

This has the unfortunate downside of teaching people not to pay
attention to the From: domain. For mailing lists maybe that's an OK
tradeoff, but it definitely not a good thing overall. I noticed that the
IETF list does From re-writing for DMARC domains that are p=reject.

This is another reason why DMARC is a shitty solution.

NANOG will rewrite the From: as well in this case.

What's your solution to phishing then? FWIW, nanog doesn't alter 
messages. All lists have the option to follow suit.


Mike



Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Bryan Fields
On 3/23/21 8:04 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
> This has the unfortunate downside of teaching people not to pay 
> attention to the From: domain. For mailing lists maybe that's an OK 
> tradeoff, but it definitely not a good thing overall. I noticed that the 
> IETF list does From re-writing for DMARC domains that are p=reject.

This is another reason why DMARC is a shitty solution.

NANOG will rewrite the From: as well in this case.

-- 
Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice
http://bryanfields.net


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Bryan Fields
On 3/23/21 7:00 PM, Sec Lists wrote:
> To just give in (or up) and say, well, that's what the youngsters now 
> prefer is to move even more towards a world dominated by a few global 
> monopolistic players who don't give a darn about open standards, open 
> protocols, not locking people in, decentralisation and fedaration

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -
forever."

:-)

-- 
Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice
http://bryanfields.net


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/24/21 17:51, james.cut...@consultant.com wrote:

An extension of Mark’s comments could include actually using a voice 
call if there really is an immediate need — voice message recording is 
built-in to many smart phones, wireless handsets, and VoIP services. . 


And this is where - per my observations in Africa - that I realized that 
formal literacy is not a prerequisite to digital literacy


A good chunk of folk in my region that own smartphones have never been 
to a school, nor can they read or write in the technical sense. But they 
all have smartphones, know how to use Facebook, WhatsApp, et al, and 
communicate at speed using voice notes.


I'm not into voice notes, as I type fast or can make a phone call. But 
for many others, especially folk who either are low on income or cannot 
read or write English very well, voice notes make plenty of sense 
because they are part of the messaging app's data bundle, they are easy 
to use, they work, and they are fast.


And no, these users don't care about the infrastructure, until it tells 
them that they are out of data and need to reload.


Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Seth Mattinen

On 3/24/21 8:08 AM, Phineas wrote:
Chiming in as a somewhat-younger network engineer here (19) - I think 
that Discord should be more widely considered and approved as an option 
across the board here. I’m active on mailing lists, and while they work, 
at the end of the day I’d much rather be using an app like Discord, and 
I know this is true for a lot of the next generation of net engineers.



I think age has something to do with that too, and I don't mean this as 
offensive at all because I've been there done that, but lack of other 
things going on in life. When I was 19 I had no problem being available 
on my cell phone at all times. I'd do weekends and nights with joy. I'd 
volunteer to take all the extra projects the older people didn't want. 
I'd make up projects just because. I'd respond to 
messages/emails/whatever immediately if I was awake no matter what time 
it was. Hell, I used to respond to NOC stuff while I was sitting in 
class rather than wait until the end.


Now that I'm older and have things like a house and family, I slowly 
shifted to not wanting to be available constantly. I'd rather work on 
some house project, bake a cake, watch TV with the wife, or play games I 
missed out on when I was "busy" with stuff that hardly seems important 
now. I don't want my life to be a slave to apps or jump at every 
notification I get. I have a laptop just in case I need one, but my 
primary work area is my desk with desktop computer. When I step away 
from my desk I'm really stepping away, not transitioning to the sofa or 
dinner table to keep working on a laptop (something I did in my 20's). 
Now if someone messages me and I don't think it's time critical I'll get 
back to it when I feel like it. If it's emergency pick up the phone and 
dial a voice call: if it's not worth that much effort, it's not that 
important. I don't want to end up divorced or have a contentious home 
life because I can't separate work from the wife and kids.


So the way I see it there will *always* be a general disconnect in how 
the younger and older groups prefer to interact because they're simply 
at completely different stages in their lives.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread james.cut...@consultant.com
> On Mar 24, 2021, at 11:43 AM, Mark Tinka  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/24/21 17:31, Tom Beecher wrote:
> 
>>  Real time can be helpful when needed, but when it is not, it feels to me 
>> like it becomes significant noise, and often times impossible to track what 
>> conversations are when (and when they were.).
> 
> I agree with this when it comes to messaging apps.
> 
> I made the conscious decision not to be beholden to these messaging apps. 
> I'll get to it, when I get to it.
> 
> Time is very precious; if you feel something is urgent, call. Sending me a 
> text and getting cross because I didn't reply in 60 seconds just falls on 
> deaf ears. As you say, time is our main asset.
> 
> Not to sound aloof, but unless it's time-sensitive and I happen to be on app 
> when the message comes in, I'll generally reply after a day, sometimes a 
> week. I've setup my phones not to illuminate, vibrate or chime when messages 
> or other such things come in. Phone calls being the only exception.
> 
> It has allowed me to slow down, and make better use of my limited time 
> (mostly drinking wine, but you get the idea).
> 
> Which is why, for me, replicas of a NOG on Telegram or Signal just doesn't 
> work - it's too real-time for me. I check e-mail more regularly (on my 
> laptop) than I check my phones.
> 
> Mark.
An extension of Mark’s comments could include actually using a voice call if 
there really is an immediate need — voice message recording is built-in to many 
smart phones, wireless handsets, and VoIP services. 

Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/24/21 17:43, Mark Tinka wrote:



Time is very precious; if you feel something is urgent, call. Sending 
me a text and getting cross because I didn't reply in 60 seconds just 
falls on deaf ears. As you say, time is our main asset.


And I afford anyone I text the exact same courtesy as well. A message 
from me has no "reply by" date. You'll get to it, when you get to it.


If what I have to say is urgent, I'll call you.

Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/24/21 17:31, Tom Beecher wrote:

 Real time can be helpful when needed, but when it is not, it feels to 
me like it becomes significant noise, and often times impossible to 
track what conversations are when (and when they were.).


I agree with this when it comes to messaging apps.

I made the conscious decision not to be beholden to these messaging 
apps. I'll get to it, when I get to it.


Time is very precious; if you feel something is urgent, call. Sending me 
a text and getting cross because I didn't reply in 60 seconds just falls 
on deaf ears. As you say, time is our main asset.


Not to sound aloof, but unless it's time-sensitive and I happen to be on 
app when the message comes in, I'll generally reply after a day, 
sometimes a week. I've setup my phones not to illuminate, vibrate or 
chime when messages or other such things come in. Phone calls being the 
only exception.


It has allowed me to slow down, and make better use of my limited time 
(mostly drinking wine, but you get the idea).


Which is why, for me, replicas of a NOG on Telegram or Signal just 
doesn't work - it's too real-time for me. I check e-mail more regularly 
(on my laptop) than I check my phones.


Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Tom Beecher
Thanks for chiming in Phineas.

Just for the sake of clarity, the platform that NANOG is considering is
Discourse ( https://www.discourse.org/ ) , not Discord (
https://discord.com/ ) .

They are different use cases, for sure. Primary difference being one is for
real time communication, and one is not. Personally, I tend to want to
minimize the number of real time communication pathways, because as a wise
person once told me earlier in my career, the most valuable resource I have
is my time. Real time can be helpful when needed, but when it is not, it
feels to me like it becomes significant noise, and often times impossible
to track what conversations are when (and when they were.).

On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 11:09 AM Phineas  wrote:

> Chiming in as a somewhat-younger network engineer here (19) - I think that
> Discord should be more widely considered and approved as an option across
> the board here. I’m active on mailing lists, and while they work, at the
> end of the day I’d much rather be using an app like Discord, and I know
> this is true for a lot of the next generation of net engineers.
>
> The costs (main one is federation/lock-in?) outweigh the benefits entirely:
> - Clear and organized channels of communication
> - Threads (coming soon, which will help a lot for communities like NANOG)
> - Moderation bots
> - Roles that allow people interested in certain topics to join the
> channels they care about
>
> In terms of platform lock-in; I know some of the higher up team there
> pretty well and I know they’d welcome us with open arms and be happy to
> answer any questions or solve issues we’re having. There are also bots that
> allow you to export entire channel histories live or for archive.
>
> Phin
>
> On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 2:54 PM Robert Kisteleki  wrote:
>
>> >> [...]
>> >> Keeping it simple so you can reach your result faster and most
>> >> efficiently is often understood more by the kids than us geezers.
>> >> While we are fighting about whether Discourse or Mailman are
>> >> appropriate, the kids have probably dumped both and found something
>> >> that gets them to the promised land 5 seconds after they install the
>> app.
>> >
>> > ...only to end up with yet another account at yet another data mining
>> > (future) monopolist butchering standards... I'm all for moving with the
>> > flow and embrace new things as long as it's based on open standards,
>> > open protocols, does not lock people in to a specific platform, etc.,
>> is
>> > decentralised and federated and gives users the choice (e.g. choice of
>> > MUA / MTA, or XMPP client, etc.). The trend to force everything to
>> > web-based or only THAT particular app is a fundamental step backwards
>> > towards significant less of choice on the internet.
>> >
>> > To just give in (or up) and say, well, that's what the youngsters now
>> > prefer is to move even more towards a world dominated by a few global
>> > monopolistic players who don't give a darn about open standards, open
>> > protocols, not locking people in, decentralisation and fedaration...
>> > And youngsters - as with anything in life - need to be educated and
>> made
>> > aware of that (spoken as a former teacher).
>> >
>> > Sec
>>
>> (Excuses for not being a "real NANO", but have strong ties.)
>>
>> I would not use the same strong words, but I agree with this in spirit.
>>
>> As of today, email is the ultimate standard that helps me manage my
>> relations in a similar manner to almost all of the professional
>> communities I'm interested in (*). I do observe that multiple of them
>> have proposals to move on to something else, in many cases to walled
>> gardens. This bears a number of risks towards participation and keeping
>> (long term) history.
>>
>> As for participation: I'm concerned that for me to keep up being
>> involved in these communities, I'd have to engage an ever increasing
>> number of (proprietary) platforms *all of which are incompatible with
>> each other*. Different communities adopt different solutions, so the
>> list started to include FB, github, discord, mattermost, etc. and will
>> soon include signal, telegram, and everything else in between. A common
>> denominator, being almost always email, is badly needed. And exists.
>> OTOH once this becomes unbearable, I *will* stop participating in some.
>> As for NANOG, such a move will surely make otherwise valuable members
>> tune out?
>>
>> As for keeping history: there's surely a break when the whole community
>> is moved to a new platform. If that ever happens again, there's another
>> discontinuity. This is only worse with proprietary platforms where
>> exporting / backing up history for long term preservation is likely
>> hard, if not entirely impossible.
>>
>> All in all, I'm happier if email continues to be the backbone of
>> communication here.
>>
>> Robert
>>
>> (*) sadly, this is already not entirely true
>>
>>


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/24/21 17:08, Phineas wrote:

Chiming in as a somewhat-younger network engineer here (19) - I think 
that Discord should be more widely considered and approved as an 
option across the board here. I’m active on mailing lists, and while 
they work, at the end of the day I’d much rather be using an app like 
Discord, and I know this is true for a lot of the next generation of 
net engineers.


The costs (main one is federation/lock-in?) outweigh the benefits 
entirely:

- Clear and organized channels of communication
- Threads (coming soon, which will help a lot for communities like NANOG)
- Moderation bots
- Roles that allow people interested in certain topics to join the 
channels they care about


In terms of platform lock-in; I know some of the higher up team there 
pretty well and I know they’d welcome us with open arms and be happy 
to answer any questions or solve issues we’re having. There are also 
bots that allow you to export entire channel histories live or for 
archive.




As much as my life would be over the day this happens, I completely 
accept that this is where it has to go, if we want to engage with the up 
& coming blood.


Ultimately, our main interest is to keep this thing going, long after 
we've all ran through the vineyards on our way to eternity :-).


Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/24/21 16:52, Robert Kisteleki wrote:




All in all, I'm happier if email continues to be the backbone of 
communication here.


Same here.

But think about this... every smartphone the kids have comes with either 
an e-mail client, a web browser, or both.


Plenty of free e-mail services abound.

And yet, they still choose a messaging app, that probably sits right 
next to the e-mail and browser apps.


Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/24/21 01:00, Sec Lists wrote:



...only to end up with yet another account at yet another data mining 
(future) monopolist butchering standards... I'm all for moving with 
the flow and embrace new things as long as it's based on open 
standards, open protocols, does not lock people in to a specific 
platform, etc., is decentralised and federated and gives users the 
choice (e.g. choice of MUA / MTA, or XMPP client, etc.). The trend to 
force everything to web-based or only THAT particular app is a 
fundamental step backwards towards significant less of choice on the 
internet.


To just give in (or up) and say, well, that's what the youngsters now 
prefer is to move even more towards a world dominated by a few global 
monopolistic players who don't give a darn about open standards, open 
protocols, not locking people in, decentralisation and fedaration...
And youngsters - as with anything in life - need to be educated and 
made aware of that (spoken as a former teacher).


It's a bit difficult, nowadays, to push water up that hill, because the 
(content) folk who are able to chart this new Internet that has slowly 
developed over the last decade simply have too much money. A lot more 
money than classic telco and Hollywood have ever had, combined.


Add to that, the majority of Internet users on this earth (the kids 
included, but more so) simply have no time to respect the purist 
ideologies of the engineers and operators of old. My American friend 
used to say, "They just want their MTV". In 2021, they just want their 
app to work, and your ability to win their hearts and minds over lies in 
the first 5 - 10 seconds that they install and try to use your app. They 
don't care how many hours you've slaved getting it to production - which 
is why they are constantly flipping between apps and screens; in 
constant search of that (perceived) value.


The kids (and many people nowadays) don't want to know about the 
infrastructure. Infrastructure is this thing that stands in the middle 
of them and the service they want to so desperately and quickly get to. 
Have you ever heard the kids saying anything good about mobile data 
prices, signal quality or the connectivity they and fixed line providers 
deliver to them? All they will say is, "My Internet is down", and the 
reason may be as simple as 8.8.8.8 having a sneeze, which has nothing to 
do with the underlying infrastructure they are connected to.


This horse has left the stable. There's no putting it back in. Our only 
hope is to modify our belief culture into what we perceive to be of 
"value", because that is all the kids care about. Not your precious MUA, 
MTA or big iron shelf with the line cards it holds :-).


And yes, you could take on the content folk that are enabling this, but 
Australia is a good example of how that can go.


Is unseating them insurmountable? No. Is it hard? Certainly.

Funny, I was speaking at the previous AfPIF virtual peering conference 
about this very topic, just yesterday:


https://www.afpif.org/virtual-peering-series-africa/death-of-transit-the-evolving-role-of-ixps/

For me, it comes down to leadership - in government at regulation, where 
they MUST create conducive entrepreneurial environments that allow local 
intellect to create alternatives to the global content folk (just look 
at WeChat in China).


And secondly, leadership within infrastructure (fixed and mobile 
providers) to understand that the kids and the world don't see value in 
their product today. That infrastructure is just a means toward the real 
value, and if infrastructure wants to survive, we need to insert 
ourselves into the real value action, practically and deliberately.


Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Phineas
Chiming in as a somewhat-younger network engineer here (19) - I think that
Discord should be more widely considered and approved as an option across
the board here. I’m active on mailing lists, and while they work, at the
end of the day I’d much rather be using an app like Discord, and I know
this is true for a lot of the next generation of net engineers.

The costs (main one is federation/lock-in?) outweigh the benefits entirely:
- Clear and organized channels of communication
- Threads (coming soon, which will help a lot for communities like NANOG)
- Moderation bots
- Roles that allow people interested in certain topics to join the channels
they care about

In terms of platform lock-in; I know some of the higher up team there
pretty well and I know they’d welcome us with open arms and be happy to
answer any questions or solve issues we’re having. There are also bots that
allow you to export entire channel histories live or for archive.

Phin

On Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 2:54 PM Robert Kisteleki  wrote:

> >> [...]
> >> Keeping it simple so you can reach your result faster and most
> >> efficiently is often understood more by the kids than us geezers.
> >> While we are fighting about whether Discourse or Mailman are
> >> appropriate, the kids have probably dumped both and found something
> >> that gets them to the promised land 5 seconds after they install the
> app.
> >
> > ...only to end up with yet another account at yet another data mining
> > (future) monopolist butchering standards... I'm all for moving with the
> > flow and embrace new things as long as it's based on open standards,
> > open protocols, does not lock people in to a specific platform, etc., is
> > decentralised and federated and gives users the choice (e.g. choice of
> > MUA / MTA, or XMPP client, etc.). The trend to force everything to
> > web-based or only THAT particular app is a fundamental step backwards
> > towards significant less of choice on the internet.
> >
> > To just give in (or up) and say, well, that's what the youngsters now
> > prefer is to move even more towards a world dominated by a few global
> > monopolistic players who don't give a darn about open standards, open
> > protocols, not locking people in, decentralisation and fedaration...
> > And youngsters - as with anything in life - need to be educated and made
> > aware of that (spoken as a former teacher).
> >
> > Sec
>
> (Excuses for not being a "real NANO", but have strong ties.)
>
> I would not use the same strong words, but I agree with this in spirit.
>
> As of today, email is the ultimate standard that helps me manage my
> relations in a similar manner to almost all of the professional
> communities I'm interested in (*). I do observe that multiple of them
> have proposals to move on to something else, in many cases to walled
> gardens. This bears a number of risks towards participation and keeping
> (long term) history.
>
> As for participation: I'm concerned that for me to keep up being
> involved in these communities, I'd have to engage an ever increasing
> number of (proprietary) platforms *all of which are incompatible with
> each other*. Different communities adopt different solutions, so the
> list started to include FB, github, discord, mattermost, etc. and will
> soon include signal, telegram, and everything else in between. A common
> denominator, being almost always email, is badly needed. And exists.
> OTOH once this becomes unbearable, I *will* stop participating in some.
> As for NANOG, such a move will surely make otherwise valuable members
> tune out?
>
> As for keeping history: there's surely a break when the whole community
> is moved to a new platform. If that ever happens again, there's another
> discontinuity. This is only worse with proprietary platforms where
> exporting / backing up history for long term preservation is likely
> hard, if not entirely impossible.
>
> All in all, I'm happier if email continues to be the backbone of
> communication here.
>
> Robert
>
> (*) sadly, this is already not entirely true
>
>


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Robert Kisteleki

[...]
Keeping it simple so you can reach your result faster and most 
efficiently is often understood more by the kids than us geezers. 
While we are fighting about whether Discourse or Mailman are 
appropriate, the kids have probably dumped both and found something 
that gets them to the promised land 5 seconds after they install the app.


...only to end up with yet another account at yet another data mining 
(future) monopolist butchering standards... I'm all for moving with the 
flow and embrace new things as long as it's based on open standards, 
open protocols, does not lock people in to a specific platform, etc., is 
decentralised and federated and gives users the choice (e.g. choice of 
MUA / MTA, or XMPP client, etc.). The trend to force everything to 
web-based or only THAT particular app is a fundamental step backwards 
towards significant less of choice on the internet.


To just give in (or up) and say, well, that's what the youngsters now 
prefer is to move even more towards a world dominated by a few global 
monopolistic players who don't give a darn about open standards, open 
protocols, not locking people in, decentralisation and fedaration...
And youngsters - as with anything in life - need to be educated and made 
aware of that (spoken as a former teacher).


Sec


(Excuses for not being a "real NANO", but have strong ties.)

I would not use the same strong words, but I agree with this in spirit.

As of today, email is the ultimate standard that helps me manage my 
relations in a similar manner to almost all of the professional 
communities I'm interested in (*). I do observe that multiple of them 
have proposals to move on to something else, in many cases to walled 
gardens. This bears a number of risks towards participation and keeping 
(long term) history.


As for participation: I'm concerned that for me to keep up being 
involved in these communities, I'd have to engage an ever increasing 
number of (proprietary) platforms *all of which are incompatible with 
each other*. Different communities adopt different solutions, so the 
list started to include FB, github, discord, mattermost, etc. and will 
soon include signal, telegram, and everything else in between. A common 
denominator, being almost always email, is badly needed. And exists. 
OTOH once this becomes unbearable, I *will* stop participating in some. 
As for NANOG, such a move will surely make otherwise valuable members 
tune out?


As for keeping history: there's surely a break when the whole community 
is moved to a new platform. If that ever happens again, there's another 
discontinuity. This is only worse with proprietary platforms where 
exporting / backing up history for long term preservation is likely 
hard, if not entirely impossible.


All in all, I'm happier if email continues to be the backbone of 
communication here.


Robert

(*) sadly, this is already not entirely true



Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Noah
On Mon, 22 Mar 2021, 18:56 Grant Taylor via NANOG,  wrote:

> On 3/21/21 8:03 AM, Noah wrote:
> > Well baby boomers & gen-x will struggle to dump mail...I mean it simple
> > and just works.
>
> Indeed.
>
> There's also the fact that it comes to you as opposed to you going to it.
>
> > We were trying to get a community of newbie techies mostly millennials &
> > gen-z to actively engage on a list we subscribed them too for the past 2
> > years and believe me, I can count no more than 10 posts mainly from we
> > few mailing list folk...
> >
> > When we requested for feedback, them gen-z cried out loud for
> > interactions to happen on some social media app through groups or
> > channels, and since they are the target audience and the majority, we
> > settled for discord and telegram which they actively engage on :-).
>
> I must be ignorant as I don't grok this.
>
> Are they willing to use a (traditional) forum (of sorts) that is
> dedicated to the venue?  Or Are they wanting things to come to them
> wherever they happen to be today?  E.g. Facebook group, Discord, Slack,
> etc?
>

We only attempted to get them to be active on the mailing list and not
traditional forums...

But to be honest, they are more active on the messaging apps like Telegram
(which allows almost unlimited members per group or channel) and like I
said, discord and we move them to discord after trying slack channels.

Bottom line, the UI/UX seems to be what cuts for Gen-z members of our tech
community.

We still send important announcements via the mailing list for historical
and archiving purposes also to allow those who miss chat messages (without
scrolling through hundreds of chats messages)  to get such important posts
in their email inbox.

Noah


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-24 Thread Sec Lists

Hi,

On 23.03.2021 14:49, Mark Tinka wrote:

[...]
Keeping it simple so you can reach your result faster and most 
efficiently is often understood more by the kids than us geezers. 
While we are fighting about whether Discourse or Mailman are 
appropriate, the kids have probably dumped both and found something 
that gets them to the promised land 5 seconds after they install the 
app.


...only to end up with yet another account at yet another data mining 
(future) monopolist butchering standards... I'm all for moving with 
the flow and embrace new things as long as it's based on open 
standards, open protocols, does not lock people in to a specific 
platform, etc., is decentralised and federated and gives users the 
choice (e.g. choice of MUA / MTA, or XMPP client, etc.). The trend 
to force everything to web-based or only THAT particular app is a 
fundamental step backwards towards significant less of choice on 
the internet.


To just give in (or up) and say, well, that's what the youngsters now 
prefer is to move even more towards a world dominated by a few global 
monopolistic players who don't give a darn about open standards, open 
protocols, not locking people in, decentralisation and fedaration... 

And youngsters - as with anything in life - need to be educated and 
made aware of that (spoken as a former teacher).


Sec


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Andy Ringsmuth
>>> I am not going to lament much, either. It is just how it goes. On the
>>> brighter side, there will also be a minority, who will come to email
>>> exactly because they will be aspiring power users. I think there will
>>> always be some aspiring power users, so it is not going to be only bad.
>> 
>> There will be, but they will keep dwindling.
> 
> Things may be coming to this but they do not have to. I understand
> that being a power user involves talking to computer with some kind of
> a language, as opposed to pointing with finger. One example is unix
> commands, where "ls /usr/bin/ /sbin /usr/sbin/ | wc -l" gives me well
> over four thousand "words". So the question is, if in a future there
> will be systems which allow "talking to computer with words", allowing
> to make complex descriptions of "what to do".
> 
> Talking to "siri" is not what I am thinking about, because just like
> "desktop metaphore", the "assistant metaphore" is trying to hide too
> much of underlying complexity to allow "power usage”.

Obligatory:

Scotty: Computer! Computer? 
[He's handed a mouse, and he speaks into it]
Scotty: Hello, computer. 
Dr. Nichols: Just use the keyboard. 
Scotty: Keyboard. How quaint. 


-Andy

Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Tomasz Rola
On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 10:32:20AM +0200, Mark Tinka wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/23/21 02:22, Tomasz Rola wrote:
> 
> >I am not going to lament much, either. It is just how it goes. On the
> >brighter side, there will also be a minority, who will come to email
> >exactly because they will be aspiring power users. I think there will
> >always be some aspiring power users, so it is not going to be only bad.
> 
> There will be, but they will keep dwindling.

Things may be coming to this but they do not have to. I understand
that being a power user involves talking to computer with some kind of
a language, as opposed to pointing with finger. One example is unix
commands, where "ls /usr/bin/ /sbin /usr/sbin/ | wc -l" gives me well
over four thousand "words". So the question is, if in a future there
will be systems which allow "talking to computer with words", allowing
to make complex descriptions of "what to do".

Talking to "siri" is not what I am thinking about, because just like
"desktop metaphore", the "assistant metaphore" is trying to hide too
much of underlying complexity to allow "power usage".

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  **
** **
** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Valdis Klētnieks
On Tue, 23 Mar 2021 17:34:37 -0600, Grant Taylor via NANOG said:
> On 3/23/21 4:16 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
> > But they still have the originating domain's From: address.
>
> My opinion is that messages from the mailing list should not have the
> originating domain in the From: address.  The message from the mailing
> list should be from the mailing list's domain.

And if you do that, what's your preferred way of rearranging the RFC822
headers to denote who the mail was originally from? (Hint: this is something
that RFC compliant MUAs must be able to figure out, and get it correct).



pgp9jcM6wUcrJ.pgp
Description: PGP signature


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Michael Thomas



On 3/23/21 4:34 PM, Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote:

On 3/23/21 4:16 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:

But they still have the originating domain's From: address.


My opinion is that messages from the mailing list should not have the 
originating domain in the From: address.  The message from the mailing 
list should be from the mailing list's domain.


This has the unfortunate downside of teaching people not to pay 
attention to the From: domain. For mailing lists maybe that's an OK 
tradeoff, but it definitely not a good thing overall. I noticed that the 
IETF list does From re-writing for DMARC domains that are p=reject.





Don't try to graft "can I trust what the mailing list purports or not" 
question onto the problem.  Simplify it to "does this message (from 
the mailing list) pass current best practice security tests or not".  
Notice how the second question is the same question that is already 
being posed about all email (presuming receiving server is doing so).



That is the essence of the problem and always has been. If somebody 
resigns an altered message, does that change my decision of what to do 
in the face of DMARC p=reject? That means I need to know something about 
that mailing list if the answer is yes. Best practices have nothing to 
do with it. It is all about reputation. A message mangler can be Lawful 
Evil, after all.




Since Google participated in ARC, that is a pretty tacit admission 
they don't know how to do mailing list reputation either.


IMHO ARC has at least a priming / boot strapping problem.  How does a 
receiver know if they can trust the purported information they receive 
from the sending system or not.  Simply put, it doesn't.  Hence why I 
think that ARC, as I understand it, is going to fail to thrive.


I went back to the DMARC mailing list wondering what magic that ARC 
provided that we didn't think about 15 years ago only to be disappointed 
that the answer was "none". I really don't understand how this got past 
IESG muster, but it was an experiment.





I personally believe that the mailing list manager, or better it's 
underlying SMTP server infrastructure, should uphold strict 
requirements on the incoming messages.  Only clean messages should be 
emitted from the mailing list manager.  Further, those messages should 
themselves adhere to the same high security standards.


Yes, I think that's a given and feeds into their reputation.




Think about it this way:  Is there really anything (of significant 
value) different between a mailing list manager and a person (or other 
form of automation) receiving a message from a mailbox, copying and 
pasting it (work with me here) into a new message and sending it 
$NumberOfSubscribers times per message to the mailing list?  --  I 
don't think there is.


From the standpoint of the receiving domain, it has no clue who mangled 
the original message. The only thing they know is that there isn't a 
valid signature from the originating domain and what the originating 
domain's advice is for that situation.





What would you want SPF / DKIM / DMARC to do if I took a message from 
you (directly vs passing through the mailing list manager) and changed 
the recipient(s) and re-sent it out to one or more other people?  -- 
I'd wager a reasonable lunch that most people would want SPF / DKIM / 
DMARC to detect and possibly thwart such forwarding.  --  So why is a 
mailing list held to different (lower) standards?


This is the so-called replay attack. It's nonsense. Email has always 
been essentially multicast.



An unsigned message is treated the same as a broken signature. That 
doesn't help from the From: signing policy standpoint.


The original From: signature should have been validated, weighted, and 
judged /before/ it made it to the mailing list manager. Further, the 
mailing list manager should have removed any reference to the original 
signature.  


Signatures shouldn't be removed: a broken signature is identical to a 
missing signature security-wise, but broken signatures can be used for 
forensics. I, for example, could reconstruct a very large percentage of 
mailing list messages to unbreak signatures. It was to the point that it 
was quite tempting to use that approach to deal with MLM traversal.


Mike


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Grant Taylor via NANOG

On 3/23/21 4:16 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:

But they still have the originating domain's From: address.


My opinion is that messages from the mailing list should not have the 
originating domain in the From: address.  The message from the mailing 
list should be from the mailing list's domain.


No matter how you slice it, you can't get around the fact that DMARC is 
meant to defend against unauthorized using of protected domains in the 
From: header.


Manifestly using MLM signatures as means of doing a reputation check is 
a previously unsolved problem hence the silliness of the ARC experiment 
which relies on the same assumption you are making here.


I do not think that any such endorsements / vouchers / etc. will ever 
work well.


I believe that the mailing list being a terminal and originating entity 
is the way forward.  We all send messages explicitly between two 
parties, ourselves and the mailing list.  Subsequently the mailing list 
originates a new / independent message explicitly between itself and a 
single recipient.


Don't try to graft "can I trust what the mailing list purports or not" 
question onto the problem.  Simplify it to "does this message (from the 
mailing list) pass current best practice security tests or not".  Notice 
how the second question is the same question that is already being posed 
about all email (presuming receiving server is doing so).


Since Google participated in ARC, that is a pretty tacit admission 
they don't know how to do mailing list reputation either.


IMHO ARC has at least a priming / boot strapping problem.  How does a 
receiver know if they can trust the purported information they receive 
from the sending system or not.  Simply put, it doesn't.  Hence why I 
think that ARC, as I understand it, is going to fail to thrive.


I personally believe that the mailing list manager, or better it's 
underlying SMTP server infrastructure, should uphold strict requirements 
on the incoming messages.  Only clean messages should be emitted from 
the mailing list manager.  Further, those messages should themselves 
adhere to the same high security standards.


Think about it this way:  Is there really anything (of significant 
value) different between a mailing list manager and a person (or other 
form of automation) receiving a message from a mailbox, copying and 
pasting it (work with me here) into a new message and sending it 
$NumberOfSubscribers times per message to the mailing list?  --  I don't 
think there is.


What would you want SPF / DKIM / DMARC to do if I took a message from 
you (directly vs passing through the mailing list manager) and changed 
the recipient(s) and re-sent it out to one or more other people?  -- 
I'd wager a reasonable lunch that most people would want SPF / DKIM / 
DMARC to detect and possibly thwart such forwarding.  --  So why is a 
mailing list held to different (lower) standards?


Treat the mailing list as a terminal entity that generates a new 
outbound message which happens to be substantially based on the incoming 
message's body contents.


Terminal as in all the SMTP protections for the original sender stop at 
the mailing list manager.  Likewise a new independent set of SMTP 
protections start with the new messages from the mailing list manager to 
subscribers.  Including the contents of the From: header.


The sticking point is the From: address. If I set up a DMARC p=reject 
policy, I should not be surprised that the receiver does what I asked 
and trashes mailing list traffic.


As well it should.

The point in my blog post is that after over 15 years a solution 
is not going to be found, and trust me I have tried back in the 
day.


IMHO:

 - Trying to pass original metadata /through/ the mailing list /and/ 
deliver it successfully is a fool's errand.
 - Treating the mailing list (or anything like it) as a terminal point 
avoids the problem.


That we should just give up caring about mailing list traversal and 
put the burden on MLM's to figure it out by either not changing the 
message body/subject, or using that horrible hack of rewriting the 
From address.


Is it /truly/ a horrible hack?

I post a morbid scenario:  $BenevolentEntity passes away, and states in 
their will and testament that $Beneficiary should receive $Something. 
--  The message did originate /from/ the benevolent entity, but the 
beneficiary heard / received the message from the $Executor, *NOT* the 
$BenevolentEntity.


Mailing lists have been sending out resigned messages for over a decade. 
We still have really low adoption of p=reject signing policy and at 
least part of the problem is because of fear of mailing lists affecting 
users.


As you can probably tell, I suspect that most of those mailing lists 
have not been configured to operate as a terminal entity.


In Microsoft domain parlance, this is the difference of trusting a 
domain vs the transitive counterpart of trusting who the domain trusts. 
IMHO the former is a relatively sim

Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Michael Thomas



On 3/23/21 2:55 PM, Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote:

On 3/23/21 1:40 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
The big problem with mailing lists is that they screw up security by 
changing the subject/body and breaking DKIM signatures.


What you are describing is a capability, configuration, execution 
issue with the mailing list manager software.


Said another way, what you are describing is *NOT* a problem with the 
concept of mailing lists.


MLMs can easily receive messages -- after their MTA imposes all 
germane filtering -- and generate /new/ but *completely* *independent* 
messages substantially based on the incoming message's content.  These 
/new/ messages come /from/ /the/ /mailing/ /list/!  Thus the mailing 
list operators can leverage all the aforementioned security / safety 
measure for the mailing list.
But they still have the originating domain's From: address. Manifestly 
using MLM signatures as means of doing a reputation check is a 
previously unsolved problem hence the silliness of the ARC experiment 
which relies on the same assumption you are making here. Since Google 
participated in ARC, that is a pretty tacit admission they don't know 
how to do mailing list reputation either.


SPF / DKIM / DMARC are mean to enable detection (and optionally 
blocking) of messages that do not come from their original source. 
Mailing lists are inherently contrary to this.  But the mailing list 
can be a /new/ source.
The sticking point is the From: address. If I set up a DMARC p=reject 
policy, I should not be surprised that the receiver does what I asked 
and trashes mailing list traffic. The point in my blog post is that 
after over 15 years a solution is not going to be found, and trust me I 
have tried back in the day. That we should just give up caring about 
mailing list traversal and put the burden on MLM's to figure it out by 
either not changing the message body/subject, or using that horrible 
hack of rewriting the From address.


This makes companies leery of setting the signing policy to reject 
which makes it much easier for scammers to phish.


Hence, having the mailing list send out /new/ messages with /new/ 
protection measures mean less breakage for people that send messages 
to the mailing list.


Mailing lists have been sending out resigned messages for over a decade. 
We still have really low adoption of p=reject signing policy and at 
least part of the problem is because of fear of mailing lists affecting 
users.




Treating the mailing list as it's own independent entity actually 
enables overall better security.


Aside:  It is trivial to remove things that cause heartburn (DKIM) 
/after/ NANOG's SMTP server applies filtering /before/ it goes into 
Mailman.



An unsigned message is treated the same as a broken signature. That 
doesn't help from the From: signing policy standpoint.


Mike


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Grant Taylor via NANOG

On 3/23/21 1:40 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
The big problem with mailing lists is that they screw up security by 
changing the subject/body and breaking DKIM signatures.


What you are describing is a capability, configuration, execution issue 
with the mailing list manager software.


Said another way, what you are describing is *NOT* a problem with the 
concept of mailing lists.


MLMs can easily receive messages -- after their MTA imposes all germane 
filtering -- and generate /new/ but *completely* *independent* messages 
substantially based on the incoming message's content.  These /new/ 
messages come /from/ /the/ /mailing/ /list/!  Thus the mailing list 
operators can leverage all the aforementioned security / safety measure 
for the mailing list.


SPF / DKIM / DMARC are mean to enable detection (and optionally 
blocking) of messages that do not come from their original source. 
Mailing lists are inherently contrary to this.  But the mailing list can 
be a /new/ source.


To whit, I am sending this reply to /exactly/ /one/ recipient, namely 
the NANOG mailing list.  Said recipient will take my content and send it 
out in hundreds of /new/ and /discrete/ messages.  The NANOG mailing 
list is the source of those new messages.  My email server is not 
contacting your email server.


This makes companies leery of setting the signing policy to reject 
which makes it much easier for scammers to phish.


Hence, having the mailing list send out /new/ messages with /new/ 
protection measures mean less breakage for people that send messages to 
the mailing list.


Treating the mailing list as it's own independent entity actually 
enables overall better security.


Aside:  It is trivial to remove things that cause heartburn (DKIM) 
/after/ NANOG's SMTP server applies filtering /before/ it goes into Mailman.


The Nanog list is something of an outlier in that they don't do 
modifications and the DKIM signature survives.


/Currently/, yes.  I wouldn't hold my breath for future solutions.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die



smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Michael Thomas



On 3/23/21 1:44 AM, Mikael Abrahamsson via NANOG wrote:

On Mon, 22 Mar 2021, Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote:

If it's the latter, does that mean that you have to constantly keep 
changing /where/ messages are sent to in order to keep up with the 
latest and greatest or at least most popular (in your audience) 
flavor of the day / week / month / year social media site?


All good questions. I've been using IRC+email for 25+ years now and 
from what I can see, IRC has been replaced by slack/discord etc, and 
email has been replaced by Reddit or Github Issues discussions etc. I 
was on a project where the mailing list was shut down and all further 
discussions were pushed to github instead.


I personally think the "web forum" format is inferior but that might 
be a way to reach out as well...


The big problem with mailing lists is that they screw up security by 
changing the subject/body and breaking DKIM signatures. This makes 
companies leery of setting the signing policy to reject which makes it 
much easier for scammers to phish. The Nanog list is something of an 
outlier in that they don't do modifications and the DKIM signature survives.


I wrote a piece about this a while back that companies should just set 
p=reject and ignore the mailing list problem.


https://rip-van-webble.blogspot.com/2020/12/are-mailing-lists-toast.html

Mike




Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Seth Mattinen

On 3/23/21 8:26 AM, Mark Tinka wrote:



On 3/23/21 17:11, Seth Mattinen wrote:




Okay great for those apps, but if nobody tells me where the new action 
is... how does that help me? With the list here at least it's on 
NANOG's website and they tell you how to join in.


This feels like you're saying people are not worthy of being included 
in the future because they don't "know" when they should just know if 
they are worth being included.


To be honest, if you don't hear about it, you probably aren't the target 
market :-). Happens to me all the time, don't take it personally.


I recently found out about Clubhouse, for example. But it's been around, 
for a while now.


I'm not saying that NOG lists are irrelevant - I'm just saying that the 
kids are flipping between screens faster than they can think. Us geezers 
are bound to lag in their world. But if the time is right, we shall hear 
about the Snapchat of the day so we can prepare our networks for ensuing 
breakage.





This happened to WISPA where a enough people decided to split off and 
make Facebook groups the new gathering place to the detriment of the 
mailing lists.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Andy Ringsmuth
> On 3/22/21 11:22 PM, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> As someone from a "younger generation" (2001) who does use mailing lists, 
>> semi-actively participates in RIPE mailing lists but also created a network 
>> community on Discord, I want to chime in here.
>> 
>> > Are they willing to use a (traditional) forum (of sorts) that is
>> dedicated to the venue?  Or Are they wanting things to come to them
>> wherever they happen to be today?  E.g. Facebook group, Discord, Slack, etc?
>> 
>> I haven't ever used facebook beyond receiving some invitation for an event, 
>> and I feel like that's the most common case for people around my age group. 
>> (not using Facebook that is)
>> 
> I'm under the impression that for the younger generations that Facebook is 
> deeply uncool. It's where grandma posts pictures of her knitting.
> 
> Mike

Mike, 

You hit the nail on the head right there.

Among the younger folk, the preferred methods and mediums of communication 
change faster than anything. MySpace two days ago, Facebook yesterday, 
Instagram today, Snapchat tomorrow, etc. etc. etc.

Migrate the infrastructure to InstaTwitSpit today and by the time it is all 
migrated, FaceSplatVue is all the rage.

Email has been here since the beginning of the ’net. It isn’t going away. 
Everyone knows how to use it. It is platform independent. It is not owned by 
Fuckerburg or Dorsey.

-Andy

Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Michael Thomas


On 3/22/21 11:22 PM, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:

Hi,

As someone from a "younger generation" (2001) who does use mailing 
lists, semi-actively participates in RIPE mailing lists but also 
created a network community on Discord, I want to chime in here.


> Are they willing to use a (traditional) forum (of sorts) that is
dedicated to the venue? Or Are they wanting things to come to them
wherever they happen to be today?  E.g. Facebook group, Discord, 
Slack, etc?


I haven't ever used facebook beyond receiving some invitation for an 
event, and I feel like that's the most common case for people around 
my age group. (not using Facebook that is)


I'm under the impression that for the younger generations that Facebook 
is deeply uncool. It's where grandma posts pictures of her knitting.


Mike



Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Matthew Pounsett
On Tue, 23 Mar 2021 at 02:46, Cynthia Revström via NANOG
 wrote:
>
> I have used Mattermost but iirc it has very limited access control unless you 
> have the enterprise version and generally doesn't seem to be made for public 
> groups.

I'm going to chime in here since I admin the DNS-OARC Mattermost
server, which is for public groups.  For those not familiar with it,
DNS-OARC is a NOG-like organization specific to the DNS.  More info at
.  I'm writing this just to provide
information as someone who's already operating Mattermost in the use
case under discussion .. not advocating for its use at NANOG.

Less than a year after deploying it (replacing our Jabber server), we
currently have a little under 400 users on their default 1000-seat
not-for-profit license, which is at their E10 (E for Enterprise)
level.  Mattermost has three license levels:  Free, E10, and E20.

We use a chat platform for three main use cases: internal staff chat,
member to member chat, and a public chat platform to accompany the
dns-operati...@dns-oarc.net mailing list, which—again—is a bit like a
DNS-specific version of the public NANOG list.   The main reason we
selected Mattermost for the role is because of the option to self-host
the platform.   On top of the common motivation to not want our data
to disappear because a proprietary platform went away, we have some
additional information and data privacy concerns because we facilitate
confidential communication between  our members.

I agree Mattermost isn't designed with public groups in mind, although
we manage to make it work for that just fine.  The main clue about
their intended use case is that they seem to have made the assumption
that anyone using the platform is well known to the admins of the
platform.  For example, finding and pruning idle users requires you to
write a bit of your own code—the assumption seems to be that you're
onboarding and deleting users as a reaction to some other process
(such as hiring) and not that you might have users where it's unclear
whether they're still using the platform.

Other than that one glaring gap (and they seem to be working on fixing
that) I have found it to do an excellent job.

NANOG as an organization has a lot more financial resources than OARC
and, if it was deemed desirable, I'm sure that something could be
worked out for NFP pricing for more users than the 1000-user cap on
the default NFP license, and probably even for E20 levels of features.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/23/21 17:11, Seth Mattinen wrote:




Okay great for those apps, but if nobody tells me where the new action 
is... how does that help me? With the list here at least it's on 
NANOG's website and they tell you how to join in.


This feels like you're saying people are not worthy of being included 
in the future because they don't "know" when they should just know if 
they are worth being included.


To be honest, if you don't hear about it, you probably aren't the target 
market :-). Happens to me all the time, don't take it personally.


I recently found out about Clubhouse, for example. But it's been around, 
for a while now.


I'm not saying that NOG lists are irrelevant - I'm just saying that the 
kids are flipping between screens faster than they can think. Us geezers 
are bound to lag in their world. But if the time is right, we shall hear 
about the Snapchat of the day so we can prepare our networks for ensuing 
breakage.


Mark.



Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Seth Mattinen

On 3/23/21 7:40 AM, Mark Tinka wrote:



On 3/23/21 16:34, Seth Mattinen wrote:


The problem with other "social" formats I've found is that they're 
often an exclusive club you have to know about through connections or 
be invited to. You can also be excluded on a whim.


What you can learn from that is the new brand marketing models of 
today's Internet world.


Standard over-the-top selling is not much of a model anymore. If an app 
(or service) is worth the value it purports, its users will do all the 
marketing for it that it needs.





Okay great for those apps, but if nobody tells me where the new action 
is... how does that help me? With the list here at least it's on NANOG's 
website and they tell you how to join in.


This feels like you're saying people are not worthy of being included in 
the future because they don't "know" when they should just know if they 
are worth being included.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/23/21 16:34, Seth Mattinen wrote:


The problem with other "social" formats I've found is that they're 
often an exclusive club you have to know about through connections or 
be invited to. You can also be excluded on a whim.


What you can learn from that is the new brand marketing models of 
today's Internet world.


Standard over-the-top selling is not much of a model anymore. If an app 
(or service) is worth the value it purports, its users will do all the 
marketing for it that it needs.


Mark.



Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Seth Mattinen

On 3/22/21 11:22 PM, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:
I haven't ever used facebook beyond receiving some invitation for an 
event, and I feel like that's the most common case for people around my 
age group. (not using Facebook that is)



Facebook has effectively become social media for old people. It's not 
the future IMO.


The problem with other "social" formats I've found is that they're often 
an exclusive club you have to know about through connections or be 
invited to. You can also be excluded on a whim.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/23/21 11:35, Cynthia Revström wrote:


I think this is at least partially true, but I think it is more not
wanting to be disrespected at the time they ask these questions.
No one was born with this kind of knowledge, and everyone was clueless
at some point in time.


Totally agree.

It is the result of the centuries of an industrial revolution that has 
shaped us to consider anything less than expertise as being considerable 
of anyone's time.


The kids have grown up in an age where information is democratized, 
i.e., you are far better off if you are curious and ask questions, 
rather than assume you know everything and don't need to learn anymore. 
Mobile messaging apps do not have this kind of pressure, compared to 
your garden-variety, 30-year old mailing list concept.


Not to say that either is good or bad, but to realize what works for a 
generation that is more focused on outcomes and solutions, rather than 
outcomes, solutions, and many times, posturing.




Also a permanent public archive is not a requirement of a mailing list
even if it is common.


Indeed. However, "just for posterity" is not an uncommon reason why folk 
that like mailing lists continue to do so.





Also, at least I often feel like the more casual conversational chat
format is easier than emails and this is the case for many of my
friends as well.


Couldn't agree with you more.

Keeping it simple so you can reach your result faster and most 
efficiently is often understood more by the kids than us geezers. While 
we are fighting about whether Discourse or Mailman are appropriate, the 
kids have probably dumped both and found something that gets them to the 
promised land 5 seconds after they install the app.


We'd be remiss to ignore this approach.

Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Cynthia Revström via NANOG
> Many new, young engineers will also feel more comfortable posting on message 
> apps because the group is small, well-known and reasonably private, i.e., 
> they are less afraid about sounding clueless to the whole world, on record, 
> forever.

I think this is at least partially true, but I think it is more not
wanting to be disrespected at the time they ask these questions.
No one was born with this kind of knowledge, and everyone was clueless
at some point in time.
Also a permanent public archive is not a requirement of a mailing list
even if it is common.

Also, at least I often feel like the more casual conversational chat
format is easier than emails and this is the case for many of my
friends as well.

-Cynthia

On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 9:38 AM Mark Tinka  wrote:
>
>
>
> On 3/23/21 08:22, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:
>
>
> Using a chat system they are already familiar with to ask more casual 
> questions is a lot easier for some.
> Especially if you are thinking of people who are just starting out, some of 
> which will be part of the next generation of network engineers.
>
>
> Many new, young engineers will also feel more comfortable posting on message 
> apps because the group is small, well-known and reasonably private, i.e., 
> they are less afraid about sounding clueless to the whole world, on record, 
> forever.
>
> Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Eric Kuhnke
For persons considering mattermost, I would recommend instead looking into
a self hosted Matrix + Synapse (matrix protocol server daemon) setup, which
is fully open source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(protocol)

Element is one typical GUI client for it, but there are many options.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Element_(software)



On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 11:45 PM Cynthia Revström via NANOG 
wrote:

> I have used Mattermost but iirc it has very limited access control unless
> you have the enterprise version and generally doesn't seem to be made for
> public groups.
>
> This in addition to probably the main problem, it will have higher barrier
> to entry especially for those already using Discord for other purposes.
>
> -Cynthia
>
> On Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 07:38 Karl Auer  wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 2021-03-23 at 07:22 +0100, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:
>> > Because Discord is proprietary, you can't host your own instance
>>
>> For reasons of confidentiality we implemented a MatterMost server for
>> company use. It is free, works well, runs on our own servers. It lacks
>> some of the bells and whistles that Discord has (in particular it has
>> no audio or screensharing), but as an instant messaging platform for us
>> it's worked very well indeed.
>>
>>
>> Regards, K.
>>
>> --
>> ~~~
>> Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au)
>> http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
>>
>> GPG fingerprint: 2561 E9EC D868 E73C 8AF1 49CF EE50 4B1D CCA1 5170
>> Old fingerprint: 8D08 9CAA 649A AFEF E862 062A 2E97 42D4 A2A0 616D
>>
>>
>>
>>


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Mikael Abrahamsson via NANOG

On Mon, 22 Mar 2021, Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote:

If it's the latter, does that mean that you have to constantly keep 
changing /where/ messages are sent to in order to keep up with the 
latest and greatest or at least most popular (in your audience) flavor 
of the day / week / month / year social media site?


All good questions. I've been using IRC+email for 25+ years now and from 
what I can see, IRC has been replaced by slack/discord etc, and email has 
been replaced by Reddit or Github Issues discussions etc. I was on a 
project where the mailing list was shut down and all further discussions 
were pushed to github instead.


I personally think the "web forum" format is inferior but that might be a 
way to reach out as well...


--
Mikael Abrahamssonemail: swm...@swm.pp.se


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Mark Tinka



On 3/23/21 08:22, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:



Using a chat system they are already familiar with to ask more casual 
questions is a lot easier for some.
Especially if you are thinking of people who are just starting out, 
some of which will be part of the next generation of network engineers.


Many new, young engineers will also feel more comfortable posting on 
message apps because the group is small, well-known and reasonably 
private, i.e., they are less afraid about sounding clueless to the whole 
world, on record, forever.


Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/23/21 02:22, Tomasz Rola wrote:


I am not going to lament much, either. It is just how it goes. On the
brighter side, there will also be a minority, who will come to email
exactly because they will be aspiring power users. I think there will
always be some aspiring power users, so it is not going to be only bad.


There will be, but they will keep dwindling.

It's a serious concern for me, and a relevant topic to discuss as any 
other on a NOG list such as this. It's the future of network operations 
as (don't) know it.


Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-23 Thread Mark Tinka




On 3/22/21 17:55, Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote:



Part of my struggle is that I fail to see how it scales to poll 
multiple sites (or app icon notifications) when there are 10s, 100s, 
or even more things to check.  This is /exactly/ one of the reasons 
that I *strongly* /prefer/ email, it comes to me and gets filed in the 
proper folders. Where messages sit waiting to be read with the folder 
indicating that there are unread messages in it. I then go read them 
when it's convenient for me to do so.  But most importantly, I don't 
have to go check multiple -> many places.  The unread notification / 
count percolates up to one single location.


It's just a group of people on a "secure" messaging app.

Props if the app has a desktop version so you don't break your knuckles 
typing on your i-thing.


Mark.


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-22 Thread Cynthia Revström via NANOG
I have used Mattermost but iirc it has very limited access control unless
you have the enterprise version and generally doesn't seem to be made for
public groups.

This in addition to probably the main problem, it will have higher barrier
to entry especially for those already using Discord for other purposes.

-Cynthia

On Tue, Mar 23, 2021, 07:38 Karl Auer  wrote:

> On Tue, 2021-03-23 at 07:22 +0100, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:
> > Because Discord is proprietary, you can't host your own instance
>
> For reasons of confidentiality we implemented a MatterMost server for
> company use. It is free, works well, runs on our own servers. It lacks
> some of the bells and whistles that Discord has (in particular it has
> no audio or screensharing), but as an instant messaging platform for us
> it's worked very well indeed.
>
>
> Regards, K.
>
> --
> ~~~
> Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au)
> http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
>
> GPG fingerprint: 2561 E9EC D868 E73C 8AF1 49CF EE50 4B1D CCA1 5170
> Old fingerprint: 8D08 9CAA 649A AFEF E862 062A 2E97 42D4 A2A0 616D
>
>
>
>


Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-22 Thread Karl Auer
On Tue, 2021-03-23 at 07:22 +0100, Cynthia Revström via NANOG wrote:
> Because Discord is proprietary, you can't host your own instance

For reasons of confidentiality we implemented a MatterMost server for
company use. It is free, works well, runs on our own servers. It lacks
some of the bells and whistles that Discord has (in particular it has
no audio or screensharing), but as an instant messaging platform for us
it's worked very well indeed.


Regards, K.

-- 
~~~
Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer

GPG fingerprint: 2561 E9EC D868 E73C 8AF1 49CF EE50 4B1D CCA1 5170
Old fingerprint: 8D08 9CAA 649A AFEF E862 062A 2E97 42D4 A2A0 616D





Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-22 Thread Cynthia Revström via NANOG
Hi,

As someone from a "younger generation" (2001) who does use mailing lists,
semi-actively participates in RIPE mailing lists but also created a network
community on Discord, I want to chime in here.

> Are they willing to use a (traditional) forum (of sorts) that is
dedicated to the venue?  Or Are they wanting things to come to them
wherever they happen to be today?  E.g. Facebook group, Discord, Slack, etc?

I haven't ever used facebook beyond receiving some invitation for an event,
and I feel like that's the most common case for people around my age group.
(not using Facebook that is)

(Discord is a chat based thing with a similar UX/UI to Slack)
I have mainly seen Discord, partially as the barrier to entry is very low.

> If it's the latter, does that mean that you have to constantly keep
changing /where/ messages are sent to in order to keep up with the
latest and greatest or at least most popular (in your audience) flavor
of the day / week / month / year social media site?

I see this as a potential issue for sure, and if something like Discord was
to be used, I would want to see it in addition to the mailing list. As I
think the mailing list format works a lot better for some topics.

> Either way, does the target audience that you're talking about actively
go to said site(s) (I want to say watering hole) and poll them?
Or are they using some phone / device app that polls them and puts a
notification over the icon?

I am only going to speak for how Discord works here. Discord uses the
latter or the former depending on how you see it. There are phone apps,
desktop apps, and a web client. The desktop app and the web client are
pretty much the same (some exceptions like keybinds etc).
So you can use the apps to get notifications ir you could just use the Web
UI and look at it whenever you want. (technically it is still pushing
messages to the web client via websockets)

> Part of my struggle is that I fail to see how it scales to poll multiple
sites (or app icon notifications) when there are 10s, 100s, or even more
things to check. [...]

So Discord is usually setup so you only get notifications when you or a
role (tag on a user p much) you belong to gets mentioned (like "@Cynthia
hello world!").
But at least I would imagine that if something like Discord or Slack was to
be used it would be in addition to the mailing list.
Because Discord is proprietary, you can't host your own instance, they do
platform wide bans of people violating the terms.
In addition to features like searching archives being a bit of a mess in
chat systems in general.
In a basic way a Discord guild/server (server is the more common term) can
be seen as a group of IRC channels (similar to Slack).
Sure Discord has other things like voice channels, RBAC, etc. but you can
use it as just a set of IRC channels.

> Any additional insight that you can provide would be appreciated.

As I have mentioned, personally I think if anything it should be in
addition to mailing lists, and also how the barrier to entry is quite low.

I think this is very important to get a new younger generation of people
interested in these topics. (such as myself)

Using a chat system they are already familiar with to ask more casual
questions is a lot easier for some.
Especially if you are thinking of people who are just starting out, some of
which will be part of the next generation of network engineers.

I started getting more interested in these topics (internet backbone
related topics like BGP, RPKI, etc.) around 3 years ago.

I started by talking to other people via Discord who helped me with the
kind of questions that are obvious to me now and I doubt would work as well
in a mailing list format.

In September 2018 I started a community on Discord targeted at networking
specifically (some of the ones I had seen before that were more generic
DC/enterprise hw and server stuff).
It has a bit above 400 member users at this point (some are probably
abandoned at this point though) and frequently has ~200 online (online
means client is open, not that they are looking at this community) users.

I think it does pretty well at supporting the different use cases, like
people who want help trouble shooting something, people who want to discuss
something generic, and people who want to discuss ops topics (more like
nanog).

But it's also quite flexible and allows for creating channels for specific
events or topics such as a RIPE meeting, or more recently fire at OVH SBG.

I am not sure how well I explained things here, so feel free to ask if
something is not clear or anything else. (not just directed to Grant)

-Cynthia


On Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 16:58 Grant Taylor via NANOG  wrote:

> On 3/21/21 8:03 AM, Noah wrote:
> > Well baby boomers & gen-x will struggle to dump mail...I mean it simple

> and just works.
>
> Indeed.
>
> There's also the fact that it comes to you as opposed to you going to it.
>
> > We were trying to get a community of newbie techies mostly millenni

Re: OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-22 Thread Tomasz Rola
On Mon, Mar 22, 2021 at 09:55:02AM -0600, Grant Taylor via NANOG wrote:
> On 3/21/21 8:03 AM, Noah wrote:
> >Well baby boomers & gen-x will struggle to dump mail...I mean it
> >simple and just works.
> 
> Indeed.
> 
> There's also the fact that it comes to you as opposed to you going to it.
> 
> >We were trying to get a community of newbie techies mostly
> >millennials & gen-z to actively engage on a list we subscribed
> >them too for the past 2 years and believe me, I can count no more
> >than 10 posts mainly from we few mailing list folk...
> >
> >When we requested for feedback, them gen-z cried out loud for
> >interactions to happen on some social media app through groups or
> >channels, and since they are the target audience and the majority,
> >we settled for discord and telegram which they actively engage on
> >:-).
> 
> I must be ignorant as I don't grok this.

On the other hand, I suspect majority of youngsters will never grok
email. This will be thanks to mental gap promoted by some vendors, who
certainly do not like it that anybody could, for example, set up email
server and exchange thoughts outside of their zone of control. So,
those who want to use email are capable of writing more than decent
MUA for free, while those who do not want email are unable to do it,
despite having heaps of money and paid programmers.

As of multiple fora and all-day clicking, well, it is better to keep
all those techies busy with something, lest they invent an idea and go
out to start rival business...

I am not going to suggest the big guys actively conspire but driving
people away from things-that-work is not hurting their profits, so why
would they want to change this?

I am not going to lament much, either. It is just how it goes. On the
brighter side, there will also be a minority, who will come to email
exactly because they will be aspiring power users. I think there will
always be some aspiring power users, so it is not going to be only bad.

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.  **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home**
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...  **
** **
** Tomasz Rola  mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com **


OT: Re: Younger generations preferring social media(esque) interactions.

2021-03-22 Thread Grant Taylor via NANOG

On 3/21/21 8:03 AM, Noah wrote:
Well baby boomers & gen-x will struggle to dump mail...I mean it simple 
and just works.


Indeed.

There's also the fact that it comes to you as opposed to you going to it.

We were trying to get a community of newbie techies mostly millennials & 
gen-z to actively engage on a list we subscribed them too for the past 2 
years and believe me, I can count no more than 10 posts mainly from we 
few mailing list folk...


When we requested for feedback, them gen-z cried out loud for 
interactions to happen on some social media app through groups or 
channels, and since they are the target audience and the majority, we 
settled for discord and telegram which they actively engage on :-).


I must be ignorant as I don't grok this.

Are they willing to use a (traditional) forum (of sorts) that is 
dedicated to the venue?  Or Are they wanting things to come to them 
wherever they happen to be today?  E.g. Facebook group, Discord, Slack, etc?


If it's the former, okay, that's a web UI / UX as opposed to mail UI / UX.

If it's the latter, does that mean that you have to constantly keep 
changing /where/ messages are sent to in order to keep up with the 
latest and greatest or at least most popular (in your audience) flavor 
of the day / week / month / year social media site?


Either way, does the target audience that you're talking about actively 
go to said site(s) (I want to say watering hole) and poll them?


Or are they using some phone / device app that polls them and puts a 
notification over the icon?


I'm asking from a place of ignorance as I really don't understand this 
mentality.


Part of my struggle is that I fail to see how it scales to poll multiple 
sites (or app icon notifications) when there are 10s, 100s, or even more 
things to check.  This is /exactly/ one of the reasons that I *strongly* 
/prefer/ email, it comes to me and gets filed in the proper folders. 
Where messages sit waiting to be read with the folder indicating that 
there are unread messages in it.  I then go read them when it's 
convenient for me to do so.  But most importantly, I don't have to go 
check multiple -> many places.  The unread notification / count 
percolates up to one single location.


Any additional insight that you can provide would be appreciated.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die



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