Re: [44net] Is AMPR still relatively active?

Thanks Tom. The portal already automatically sends reminder notices to coordinators with outstanding allocation requests, twice a month. If all the coordinators agree, we could change that to weekly. I find that the coordinations which take more than a few minutes to handle are those where the requester is confused and asking for something that is not sensible, so an email exchange is necessary to get the request straightened out. And it takes time to verify that the requester has supplied a valid callsign that matches his name. You might be surprised at how many folks just want a block of addresses and make up a callsign to try to get some. We've even had cases where the person registered a friend of his who is a ham but who has no interest in AMPRNet; they just were stealing his identity to get a block of addresses. And there are the BGP announced allocations, which require them to fill in an additional form by email. (It's at this point that I often find out that the person has no idea what BGP is and just checked the box out of whim, or hasn't asked his ISP if they'll announce a block for him, etc.) As for me granting coordinations, for historical reasons, each coordinator may have his own way of allocating subnets. Since I can't know all those schemes, it's not practical for me to just take a stab at it. This is a volunteer organization, and people devote their time to it as their schedule permits. I think the great majority of the volunteer coordinators are doing a good job, and I don't think the system is broken. When a coordinator seems to be unresponsive, I contact them to ask if I can help. On these rare occasions, the allocation request just slipped into a crack and a simple reminder is all that's necessary. If they don't respond, I find another coordinator by looking for volunteers. - Brian On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 02:08:58PM -0800, Tom Hayward wrote: