Re: mailman keeps holding for non-subscribers

[Eric Wong]

Bob Proulx <address@hidden> wrote:
> Eric Wong wrote:
> > Hello Savannah admins,
> 
> Mailing lists have little to do with Savannah.  I have CC'd the
> address@hidden list with this response.  That's the place to talk
> about all things related to Mailman and the GNU mailing lists.
> Savannah is all about the software source forge.

OK.   I think I only put the project on Savannah because it was
the only service which offered mailing lists without JavaScript
or CAPTCHAs at the time.

> > It seems every few months I need to login to the Mailman admin
> > interface and change the `generic_nonmember_action' option to
> > "Accept" postings for non-subscribers.
> >
> > Is there some cronjob or upgrade which keeps flipping that
> > option to "Hold"?
> 
> I am not aware of any automated process which does that.  However that
> is the standard configuration for new mailing lists.  It's a good
> configuration.  It is the recommended configuration.  But if you
> change it as far as I know nothing will fight you over it.
> 
> This is described in some detail here.
> 
>   https://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/ListHelperAntiSpam/

OK, so I'm following half the recommendations

The ones I'm going against are:

        generic_nonmember_action=hold (I want Accept)
        default_member_moderation=yes (I want no)

So, should I remove address@hidden from moderators?
I still want automated spam filters such as SpamAssassin, though.

> The normal thing is that the listhelper cancel-bot will receive the
> moderation notices, deduce messages that are spam, automatically
> discard those spam messages from the hold queue.  The anti-spam is
> conservative as a false positive is worse than a false negative.
> Remaining spam is discarded by the listhelper team.  We roll up all of
> the 1500+ lists as a collection.

Agreed that false positives are worse than false negative.

> Additionally any non-spam messages are also approved by the human
> team, and their senders either unmoderated or whitelisted.  This
> results in the avoidance of spam to the mailing lists while at the
> same time avoiding delays in posting as only the initial contact is
> held for moderation.  This has been necessary because spammers
> routinely subscribe and then post spam.  Therefore we moderate new
> addresses as they appear.

I've found automated spam filters good enough on their own and
would like to just have those without human moderation.

I don't want to have to whitelist anybody, it doesn't scale.

> The resulting process means that as a general statement project
> mailing lists need no explicit maintenance.  If you as a project
> maintainer and also a maintainer of the mailing list do nothing then
> everything happens as needed anyway.  You are however free to be as
> involved in the mailing lists as you want.

So if I'm away and unable to administer address@hidden, and
generic_nonmember_action is "Hold"; does the "human team" at GNU
will eventually accept postings in my absence?

> > The list in question is address@hidden
> 
> I don't recall any interaction with that mailing list.  It doesn't
> ring a bell with me.
> 
> > I don't want to force users to subscribe to the mailing list to
> > post(*).
> 
> Agreed.  How is that statement related to generic_nonmember_action set
> to Hold?  Seems unrelated.

I mean that I don't want any artificial delays in handling new,
unsubscribed users (in case the admins are away or unavailable).
I'd rather let an occasional spam through.

> We never want to require people to subscribe to post bug reports or
> other messages.  The GNU mailing lists are open mailing lists.  Can
> you imagine requiring someone to subscribe in order to post a bug
> report?  That would be inconvenient enough to drive most bug reporters
> away.
> 
> Although some maintainers have made subscription a requirement for
> their project mailing lists.  It goes against our recommendation and
> guidelines.  I strongly recommend against it.

OK, I'm glad we agree there :>

> > In my case, it was myself since I've been changing email
> > addresses because of the uncertainty around being able to afford
> > .org down the line.
> 
> I will guess that you changed your email address, your first message
> sent to the mailing list was therefore new and never before seen, it
> was held for moderation.  Is that the issue here?

Maybe.  I had the same issue on Feb 3, 2020 and pushed my
message through.  I refused to whitelist myself out of
principle.

Thanks.