[time-nuts] About the recent NIST thread(s)

[Tom Van Baak]

What a weekend. Just a reminder -- our "low volume, high SNR" time-nuts list works best when postings are technical and well-informed. Quite a few of the many NIST-related postings since Friday fell below that threshold.

Undoubtedly an accurate story will come out soon. If you know something for sure, or have any positive contribution, by all means share. If you just want to complain or blame, spread fear or start rumors, please don't post.

In the event that some useful NIST T&F service is actually on the chopping block, we time nuts could be a resource to help influence budget gladiators or to explain to the public just what those magic services are and why they were/are still important. I'd rather list members use their time to compose accurate, informative, and appealing testimonials about how well NIST serves the community -- or how NIST could better serve the community in the future -- than for members to use this mailing list to cry Henny Penny [1].

Please do your part to keep time-nuts a few dB better than random blog comments and social media chatter [2].

Also, remember that time-nuts is currently in unmoderated mode [3], so be careful before you hit send.

Thanks,
/tvb
http://leapsecond.com/time-nuts.htm


[1] aka https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_Little

[2] e.g.,
    https://swling.com/blog/2018/08/nist-fy2019-budget-includes-request-to-shutdown-wwv-and-wwvh/
    https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/2019-budget-proposes-shutting-down-wwv-wwvh.623786/
    https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/96fy9m/budget_proposal_to_shut_down_wwv_wwvh_time/
    https://www.reddit.com/r/shortwave/comments/96dyyr/nist_fy2019_budget_includes_request_to_shutdown/

[3] http://lists.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts_lists.febo.com/2018-May/092539.html