[petsc-users] Mailing list reply-to munging (was Any changes in ML usage between 3.1-p8 -> 3.3-p6?)

[Satish Balay]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2013, Jed Brown wrote:

> Satish Balay <balay at mcs.anl.gov> writes:
> 
> > This benefit is a bit dubious - as you'll get some migration of
> > petsc-maint traffic to petsc-users - but then you loose all the
> > 'reply-to-individual' emails from the archives [yeah - reply-to-reply
> > emails with cc:list added get archived - perhaps with broken threads].
> 
> Thus the canned response: "Please resend your last message with all Cc's
> intact so that I can reply to it on the list."
> 
> Having a consistent convention between petsc-users/petsc-dev and
> petsc-maint would be fine by me [1].
> 
> > And then there is spam - which you say can be dealt with filters. Is
> > this client side or server side?
> 
> Preserving unmunged headers makes existing spam filters more accurate.
> For example, petsc-maint is considered to be an important address in my
> mails, making it less likely to label mail setting "Reply-to:
> petsc-maint" as spam.  This is one of many criteria and I don't know how
> significant it is, but anecdotally, petsc-maint spam is almost never
> detected by gmail's spam filter, while git at vger.kernel.org spam is
> usually detected.

So it is a client side filtering. Curently there is no spam on the
mailing lists - as it goes in for moderator approval. If we switch
everyone will get spam - and users filters would have to take care of
things. I guess gmail does it one way - but not everyone is on gmail.

And then - if gmail spam fails because of "Reply-to: petsc-maint" -
then thats a useless spam filter. RT doesn't have to set that
field. Any spamer can do that trivially.

> And header munging could be turned off without enabling anonymous
> posting.

yes thats possible. With that - we'll be trading off 'enabling users
to subscribe-without-delivery' [who can easily use filters to prevent
mailing list traffic flooding their mailbox] - at the cost of everyone
remembering to 'reply-all' all the time.

> Maybe we can provide a one-click subscribe-without-delivery?

I don't know. Will have to check with systems.

For one - there are quiet a few posts to petsc-users without
subscribing first.  These mails go into moderation. I
approve/subscribe the post so that they get the replies - and
participate in the followup emails.

I still don't see the benefits of changing the mailing lists [except
for it being similar to git at vger.kernel.org, and sure - less time
spent moderating]. The current situation isn't perfect. But changing
appears to just switch one set of issues with others..

Satish

> 
> 
> [1] petsc-maint could become a mailing list with private delivery, but
>     anonymous posting, fixing minor annoyances like RT delivering mails
>     a second time to original recipients, and setting Message-ID
>     matching In-Reply-To.
>