[121351] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: SORBS on autopilot?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jed Smith)
Fri Jan 15 13:27:41 2010
From: Jed Smith <jed@jedsmith.org>
In-Reply-To: <4B50A115.5040104@sorbs.net>
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:26:49 -0500
To: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
This will be my only reply to the conversation now that Michelle has =
poked in
and taken control of the thread.
I had a beef with SORBS a while back on behalf of my day job, and it =
cost me
quite a bit -- in frustration, in doing a few things publicly that I =
regret, and
ultimately in spending a month of my life fighting with Michelle over a =
God
damned /24 and its erroneous listing. That confrontation haunts me =
today, and
not necessarily because either of us screwed up at any level. We both =
did, but
I'm haunted today because of the bad blood that the confrontation =
produced.
I am not going to revisit that experience, but it did grant something to =
share.
I can only hope that differences aside, Michelle respects my wishes and =
does
not turn NANOG into his/her and my personal fighting ground -- what's in =
the
past is done, and I'm only sharing what I learned from it, not the =
events that
transpired over said /24.
I walked away from that experience having learned a number of things. =
Firstly,
I damaged my reputation at my employer as a direct result of getting =
sucked in
to the emotional vortex that dealing with Michelle caused -- something =
in the
callous, biting, confrontational demeanor with which Michelle composes =
herself
brings out the worst in me and summons forth tribal battle rage. The =
fact that
the medium is a keyboard and not a face-to-face conversation does not =
help.
Secondly, I learned about myself and my weaknesses, particularly in =
dealing with
the public. If there's anything a competent network administrator needs =
to
master, it's dismissing a sense of entitlement. SORBS is going to do =
whatever
the hell it wants, and Michelle may or may not work with you on getting =
SORBS to
stop doing what's bugging you. The biggest mistake I made was turning =
that into
a crusade to prove her wrong; I am reminded about the (ever =
inappropriate)
Special Olympics analogy relating to Internet arguing which is strangely
appropriate when dealing with Michelle.
(As an aside, this second point has drastically altered my dealings with =
service
providers. I yell a /lot/ less when my home Internet connection goes =
out now,
and I'm all that much better for it. I'm really pleased I learned to =
let go.)
Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, I learned a valuable life lesson =
about
dealing with people like Michelle and how much it isn't worth it.
SORBS has a particularly vile reputation, and given Michelle's treatment =
of
folks in this thread it is no mystery why. Aside from Ricky's solitary =
post of
January 14th, this thread had mostly moved on from SORBS and addressed =
other
topics -- granted, it was frightfully meta and a candidate for leaving =
well
enough alone. Spam-L moderated Michelle for the exact same fault she is
demonstrating here -- even on a mailing list comprised of the who's-who =
of
Internet network administration, she will drag everybody subscribed =
through
torment and misery while attempting to defend supposed SORBS reputation =
in an
ongoing crusade to prove herself right. In Spam-L's case, it was with =
me; in
NANOG's case, it's with a number of people who have spoken negatively =
re: SORBS.
I am not dismissing blame from those fanning the conversation, but =
merely giving
credit where credit is due.
Let me reiterate for the benefit of Ricky Beam, Ken Chase, Leo Bicknell, =
Paul,
and anybody else who is tempted to debate Michelle in this thread: you =
are 100%
wasting your time.
Your time is much better spent contacting every mail administrator on =
the
Internet who 5xx's your relay's mail, or asking your upstream to move =
you out of
the affected block. Both will result in more productivity than debating =
anybody
that works for SORBS or who is a colleague of Michelle Sullivan. You =
might be
right, she might be right, and in either case it doesn't matter. Move =
on.
There are far more pressing matters in life.
Now then, that said...
I'm going to humbly request as a subscriber to NANOG that "my ticket =
wasn't
handled to my satisfaction" mails, even in spite of the above advice, =
remove
nanog@nanog.org from the distribution list and become a private matter. =
If
Michelle genuinely cares about cleaning up SORBS and raising its =
reputation, she
will not have a problem with this. If moving to a private conversation =
is
problematic for all involved parties, I hope it moves to another list.
JS
