Re: FW: Good old nabble

["Rod Morris" <rod at nabble dot com>]

On 4/18/06, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 03:50:42PM -0700, Rod Morris wrote:
> >On 18 April 2006 16:24, Dave Korn wrote:
> >
> >> I'd certainly consider that a bug in their software.  It should only archive
> >>them as they arrive /back/ from the list, not on their way out.  If they
> >>really want to archive all of their users' rejected posts across all moderated
> >>or semi-moderated lists, they should perhaps flag them up as 'unconfirmed' or
> >>somesuch by highlighting them a different colour in the web interface or
> >>something.
> >
> >Bug or undocumented feature? Hmmmm.
>
> I don't see how it could be construed as anything but a bug.
>

Sorry, I intended that comment to be sarcastically humerous.


> >You're right, we need to resolve this problem. Right now, the message gets
> >posted locally and we forward the email to the list using the Nabble user's
> >registered email address as the sender.  If the user's post is rejected
> >or if the user doesn't complete the subscription process or if he gets
> >banned from the list, we would only know because we never get the
> >message back from the list.
>
> I can't quite parse the above but ezmlm does send a bounce message when
> lists@nabble.com tries to send a message to the cygwin-apps mailing list.
>

This was all changed in the release that was posted last month. We do
not use lists for any lists that use ezmlm. We force the user to
subscribe and send the post with the user's email, so we don't get the
bounce message.


> >Currently, we assume that the user screwed up the confirmation step and we
> >send him an email once a day to remind him to complete it and tell him that
> >the message didn't go through. But if that never happens, then we do have
> >a problem.
> >
> >Flag these messages as 'Pending' sounds like a good idea. I can have our
> >UI guy come up with something that makes sense and will make it obvious.
>
> nabble is blocked from sending emal to cygwin-apps.  So no matter what
> process the user goes through on your end, their messages will never
> show up in the cygwin-apps mailing list.
>

I wasn't aware of that. We send mail now with lists@nabble as the
envelope sender and with the user as the from, requiring the user to
subscribe. But if lists or any Nabble email is blocked then the user
may not be getting the bounce. I need to check to see if we're getting
it. This whole issue comes back to whether or not you want to allow
anyone to use the gateway for posting to the list.


> >Then what? Should we delete them from the archive if they don't go through
> >after some period of time, a weeks perhaps?
>
> You're calling this "an archive" but it is not an archive of cygwin-apps
> if it (even briefly) contains a copy of a message which never was part of
> actual cygwin-apps traffic.
>

We've discussing several ways to resolve that problem. Marking the
post as pending seems to be the best solution. Then we'd remove it
completely after some period of time. Not showing it at all to the
user is confusing. More likely than not, the user would think that it
didn't go through and then post the same thing again and again. We
want to come up with a solution that fits for all the lists, not just
cygwin-apps.

> Can you mark sourceware's subscriber-only mailing lists as read-only on
> your end so that attempts to send a message are blocked immediately?
>

Sure. If any mail with Nabble as the envelope sender is getting
bounced, then there's no point in allowing local posting via the
gateway at all. We can set any list to be 1) Subscription only, 2)
Read only, 3) Subscription not required.

cygwin-apps and all other ezmlm lists are set to subscription only now.

> OTOH, you could also notice when sourceware sends you a message indicating
> that your message was denied and remove the message.
>

Yes, if we are getting the bounce, then we can. I need to see what
we're getting. As I mentioned, the mail goes with lists as the
envelope sender and the user as the from. I don't know which is
getting the bounce. Normally, the user would get it if he didn't
complete the subscription confirmation step and we only know there is
a problem because we don't get the message back from the list.

Rod Morris
Nabble.com