From my perspective as someone who first encountered NZNOG only four years ago the mailing list is great because it does what a NOG mailing list needs to do. Yes there's a little bit of noise that I don't see the relevance of, but on the whole the discussions are useful, concise and informative. AFAICT every ISP/telco is here and takes note. The lack of on-list posts from them is irrelevant if an off-list response is there when needed - which it always seems to be. In fact the speed and quality of off-list responses is impressive. This list is a real life-saver.
The conference is also great when you're there, the attendance is great, the presentations are often excellent and the side conversations are pure gold. The problems that people regularly point to are all around the organisational stuff - conference planning, website and trustee activities. However when you examine this rationally it mainly works and things get done, but what doesn't work well is the communications and engagement around all this (in which I include updating the web site). I would suggest that we avoid any unfair and polarising criticism of the trustees, who are volunteers after all, and also avoid the distracting and unhelpful rat hole of "is it all broken and should we throw it away?". If we look at it constructively, there's a lot of great stuff here, most of it works and works well and without it we would all be much poorer. Jay -- Jay Daley Chief Executive .nz Registry Services (New Zealand Domain Name Registry Limited) desk: +64 4 931 6977 mobile: +64 21 678840 linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jaydaley