Ask HN: Favorite mailing lists, IRC channels
I've recently come to appreciate true veterans of technology hang around mailing lists and IRC channels.
What are some of your favorite programming/security/sysadmin mailing lists and IRC chaneels?
What are some of your favorite programming/security/sysadmin mailing lists and IRC chaneels?
The rest of the mailing lists/IRC channels I read are all related to specific software projects, though.
I feel like I should add something here about how spending a lot of time on IRC can be inversely correlated with being someone who's doing a lot of work, in some cases. The veterans you're seeing might be people who now spend more time talking about technology than creating it, unless they're using IRC to coordinate their contributions to a project with its other members.
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(Disclaimer: I'm a regular of the channel myself. I also run the official Python channels on Freenode.)
Slightly OT, for people with email sending experience: I've noticed that some of these lists require you to confirm an email subscription ("double opt-in"), which afaik is standard operating practice for any email list these days.
Yet a couple (Bootstrappist, Web Design Weekly to name a couple at random) don't, they just send a welcome email. Are those two able to avoid the double opt-in requirement by virtue of being larger/older/more established lists, or are they assuming their open rates will keep their deliverability % high, w/o needing the extra confirmation step?
Has the double opt-in requirement become a relic?
MailOP, http://chilli.nosignal.org/mailman/listinfo/mailop
VoiceOPS, http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
Full Disclosure, https://lists.grok.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/full-disclosure
Outages, http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/outages
DNS Operations, https://lists.dns-oarc.net/mailman/listinfo/dns-operations
Its interesting to observe the growth of the channels during bitcoin's hype cycles.
There's usually an inverse relationship between quality of discussion and welcoming environment for newbies. If you want to have deep discussion about, well, anything, and you have newbies (or worse, people who think they aren't newbies) asking basic questions and failing to RTFM beforehand, you'll lose.
A few years ago, I was on a panel about intellectual property with Cory Doctorow at a science fiction convention. It COULD have been a really fun conversation - Cory and I agree on enough for common ground, and disagree enough to be interesting, and we both understood the topic really well. But the standing-room-only crowd just wanted to ask obvious question after obvious question, or go on rants that were demonstrably naive at best. It was really frustrating.
Tragedy of the commons, man.
First you post an arrogant self-serving "members only jacket" style post that literally does nothing for anyone. You didn't mention how to get into such groups, no tips for finding such groups or anything else remotely useful to anyone.
After that you intentionally go down the nonsense pedantic path of 'The OP didn't say "open".' ... which means you either (1) thought the OP wanted absolutely useless feedback to his question or (2) you are an asshole. Not sure which is worse to be honest.
Then, in a transparent trick to try to dig yourself out of the hole you had dug... you try to act like a victim of the commons. Just cause everyone hates you don't mean you are a victim in any sense, you might just be an jerk.
In a final, desperate pathetic attempt, you drop "Cory Doctorow" into the conversation and try to peer link to borrow his reputation because you have NONE of your own. Another pathetic, transparent, embarrassing tactic.
Realize that you might be the tragedy.
The flaming, however, was unnecessary and inappropriate. Downrating reasonable responses was inappropriate, too. Community behavior IS problematic here (and that includes my own community behavior, and yours as well), and that's the "tragedy of the commons" for public forums. A lot go so far down the newbie/flamewar rabbit holes that they become effectively useless. I know people who already consider HN useless for those reasons.
I'm not the victim here. The community is the victim. This shouldn't be so hard to understand.
There's a great deal to be said about the value of exclusive clubs. That's why they're so popular.
> What are some of your favorite programming/security/sysadmin mailing lists and IRC chaneels?
He is looking for open channels, and you leave a pointless comment about some elite closed channel you're a part of. Then you further crapped up the thread trying to rationalize this with some chin-stroking about the 'tragedy of the commons'. That being the case I think it's totally fair (if not charitable) to characterize your response as arrogant.
Downrating my response? I can see that. Bitching about how "arrogant" it is? So WHO crapped up the thread, exactly? You're not exactly being fair here. I don't think it's unreasonable for me to respond to getting flamed.
Or alternately, you can view this whole unfortunate affair as the sort of tragedy of the commons that undermines the quality of discussion in public forums. You can close your mind to the point, or you can open it. Your call.