I am part of the group I was referring to as amateurs, and I was not using the word in a pejorative manner. I mean it literally. We, the amateurs I am speaking of, are not experts at server administration and do it either out of necessity, for fun, or out of principal. For me, it's a bit of fun and principle—I feel it's a good thing for me to more or less know how to manage a server even as I acknowledge that experts know much more about it than I.

I would like to see servers demystified in general, and that's why I applaud articles such as this one that make the necessary counter-measures/workarounds plain and clear for those like myself.

That's all well and good, and I wish you luck in your ambitions, but you're still making a category error.

I'm reaching to understand the point you're making.

I assume you mean that you interpret what I've said as implying anyone who does not know about NTP amplification attacks is an amateur server administrator. I do not mean to imply that. I simply mean that for people like myself, who are in fact amateur server administrators, this sort of down-to-earth style of article (here is what the problem is; here is how to deal with it) is very welcome.

Although it's only academic at this point, I am curious why you think I used the word "amateur" pejoratively and what category you believe I am describing in error. I ask simply because I'd like to avoid making similar errors in the future.

Because you more-than-implied that nobody who got hit with it is a professional.