Re: [savannah-help-public] Mail list: cannot approve moderated email

[Bob Proulx]

Hello Tom,

Tom Uijldert wrote:
> I have some problems with a translator mailing list and they referred me to
> you, so here goes:

This mailing list is fine since pretty much the same people working on
the mailing lists are also working on Savannah too.  Not 100% overlap
but pretty close.  But the mailing lists are actually separate from
Savannah.

> I'm the administrator of address@hidden
> Each time a mail is held for moderation, I get a message with a link,
> telling me where I can approve or deny said request.

Yes.  That is (unfortunately) what GNU Mailman does.

> When I follow that link, however, it *always* shows me: "There are no
> pending requests".

Most mail is spam.  For spam messages the listhelper robot moderate
will run the message through SpamAssassin.  If the message is
categorized as spam then the listhelper robot will automatically
discard the message from the hold queue.  Therefore in the case of
typical spam you won't see a message because the robot is faster at
discarding the message than you are at getting over there to see it.

For non-spam messages the human listhelper volunteer team will
periodically scan through the held messages for the mailing lists and
review and approve any non-spam messages.  For non-spam messages if it
has been approved by the time you get over there then again you won't
see the message.

This process is described in more detail here:

  http://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/ListHelperAntiSpam/

Normally we unmoderate subscribers and whitelist non-subscribers after
seeing a valid message from them.  We hold unknown new senders for
review, including subscribers, because spammers often subscribe and
then post spam.  Therefore we review all initial messages from all
addresses.  But after that then there is no more delay.

When configured as we do normally I always recommend that the
listowner ignore those Mailman administrivia messages.  I use procmail
to filter them out of my mailbox.  There is no way have Mailman not
send them.  A misfeature IMNHO.  Therefore automatically filtering
them out is advised.  Many owners don't have an easy ability to do
that in which case I suggest removing your email from the mailing list
owner field and replacing it with the address@hidden
address.  (That's listhelper-moderate AT gnu.org to avoid the email
address redactor.)  That is the generic address which goes to the
human listhelper volunteer team.  That way anyone requesting
subscription help will get helped.  You are still free to log in and
do normal administration regardless of the email address.

Unfortunately while the listhelper SpamAssassin works well for the
shared Bayes database for English language lists the Bayes isn't very
sharable by other languages.  Much spam on the english language lists
is in other languages and this tends to train the Bayes engine that
those messages are spam.  We have been talking about creating a
separate Bayes database for each language but it hasn't been
implemented yet.  Because of this and depending upon the normal
content of the non-english language list the shared SpamAssassin Bayes
database may have to be disabled for it.  Which is painful when there
is a lot of spam which then requires a human to do all of the removal.
I suggest taking a cautious wait and see attitude to see what content
will normally be on the list.

> In addition, when I test the list by sending to it, it takes 4-6 hours
> before an "is being held" and a "requires approval" are sent out.

This requires more investigation.  That may be simply the normal ebb
and flow of email through the lists.gnu.org Mailman system.  Normally
mail flows through very quickly.  But at times things are saturated
and takes longer.  Or network links may be offline and things catch up
when back online.  Sometimes the machine is saturating sending out
large messages.  Or it could be that you are seeing the once daily
cron reminder nag messages from Mailman which run the queue once a
day.  Could be any or none of the above.

Normally mail flows through very quickly.  The incoming email relay is
eggs.gnu.org which receives all of the mail and does some preliminary
anti-spam.  Then messages are passed on to lists.gnu.org to Mailman.
If you show us headers then look at the Received: headers and see
where the delays are occurring.

Bob