Listserver shenigans

[torkell]

So there's an interesting little debate going on on a certain forum I frequent.

The gist of it is that member A was banned from the community-run listservers (the official ones having gone 404 a long time ago) for crashing servers. He was originally banned for one month, but that got extended for various reasons to 2 months. The ban officially expired on 30th November last year (2005).

Members B and C run a listserver each. Member C unbanned member A a while back, as per the original agreement. Member B has not, and has expressed no desire to ever do so. There is possible circumstancial evidence of member A continuing to crash servers, however nothing is currently known for certain (and there is also less circumstancial evidence of it being another member).

Given that, who out of members B and C is taking the correct action?

Comments

[pewterfish.livejournal.com]

Hmm, interesting question. As one who has maintained community servers in the past, I would have to say that B is taking the 'correct' action. Past evidence states that A was causing trouble, and there is evidence to suggest she/he may still be doing so. Until and unless anything comes out to prove that someone else is causing it, and if listservers continue to mysteriously fall over, he/she should remain banned in my opinion.

That said, of course, I'm notorious for my paranoia when it comes to system security and stability.

HTH. HAND.

[torkell]

Good point, although not my personal view. Personally I think given what has been said publicly by the admins (which is nothing since the original statement) C is correct. Then again, maybe I'm not paranoid enough.

(oh, and the attacks are on the game servers, not the listservers).

What appears to have happened is a complete breakdown in communication (communication between the listserver admins and the community, and communication among the listserver admins). Currently, B is taking the stance that C is not co-operating and so he may be 'forced' to de-peer with C (which would cause all sorts of fun problems, given the mixture of listserver settings in use). I would probably be happy with a continued ban, as long as there was actual communication about it (and it was suitably justified).

I'll ignore the uselessless of an IP ban against getting server lists when there exist multiple independent web interfaces (along with official ways to embed said interface into a php script or similar), and where the attack involves UDP.