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

[Tom Uijldert]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for this very thorough answer.

In the meantime I can confirm that I *do* get the occasional pending
requests as I sent out a test mail on Tuesday afternoon that I got offered
for moderation on Wednesday mid-day(!) and it indeed showed up in the
browser and I could approve or deny it.
So that at least is in line with your explanation.

As for the delay, I already removed the test-traffic so can't examine the
headers anymore.
I've just sent out another test, see how that goes.
I'll keep you appraised.

Thanks,
Tom.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Proulx [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: 27 July 2016 22:23
To: Tom Uijldert <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [savannah-help-public] Mail list: cannot approve moderated
email

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