Re: Any other Thunderbird users have messages never post? (WAS: Hide slur?)

[Bob Proulx]

I have been reading the thread about lost emails to the list.  Perhaps
I can help communicate the goings on that happens out of sight.  This
message is a little long.  If not interested in how email and mailing
lists work then please feel free to skip it.

Karlin High wrote:
> Robert Schmaus wrote:
> > > is anyone else using Thunderbird, and never having any
> > > lost messages at all?
> >
> > I do, and I haven't ever lost a message to this (or indeed any) list.

I doubt the problem is Thunderbird.

> > > If so, is your email provider something other than
> > It's FastMail.
> 
> Curiouser and curiouser. The part that bugs me the worst is when I do
> a Reply-All and the message never appears on the list, but then the
> other recipients of my message ALSO do a Reply-All, and have their
> replies to my message get posted to list, making it seem that my

I really don't see how that difference caused any difference at all.
In other words I don't think that is the problem.

> message delivered everywhere but to the list. Most recent example
> here, in David Nalesnik's automatic partwriter thread:
> 
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2017-09/msg00471.html
> 
> That makes it hard not to blame something on the GNU Lists end of things.

This does look like something on either 'eggs' or 'lists' intercepted
the message.  Probably one of the content filters there had a false
positive hit and kicked it out.  I have forwarded the message id to
FSF sysadmin and asked them to look for it.

In any case the flow of email is that eggs receives all incoming email
for all GNU & FSF domains.  It acts as the front end mail relay.  It
has a layer of anti-spam that will reject or discard messages that it
classifies as spam.  I do not have access to eggs and can't look at
the logs there and therefore direct all problems that might be there
to FSF sysadmin.  I have access to Mailman and some of lists.gnu.org.
The machine eggs if it classfies a message as spam will discard the
message there.  If not then it will forward the message over to
lists.gnu.org where another layer of anti-spam exists.  If it gets
through that layer then the message is handed to Mailman.

At the Mailman layer if the sender address has not posted to the
mailing before then the message will be held for moderation.  This
only happens *once* for the *first* messages from a new address until
the modertors approve it.  After that point messages from that address
are no longer held for moderation.  This is due to the problem that
spammers routinely subscribe to mailing lists and then post spam
hoping that their message will get through because they are
subscribed.  That is why we moderate new subscribers (and everyone)
upon the first message they send to the list.  But after they are
approved as a non-spammer then their messages are not held again.

I don't know how many total messages are sent through lists.gnu.org
but the total is *A LOT* and if all of those messages needed to be
moderated by humans it would be impossible.  We count on the automated
tools such as SpamAssassin and other checks to automatically classify
messages as much as possible.  A description of how SpamAssassin is
used in the lists.gnu.mailman setup is described in some detail here
https://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/ListHelperAntiSpam/ .

This means that if you change email addresses and send from a
different location that message looks like a new user.  It will be
held for human moderation.  Once.  Until approved.  Then there will be
no more moderation.

So where can mail get lost?  There are still several places.  One is
that there are content filters at eggs.gnu.org that may kick out
individual messages that trip the filter.  And effectively the same is
true on lists.gnu.org too.

Another is that DNSBLs are used to avoid mail from known locations.
You may be using a mail relay that is also used by others that is
sending spam and therefore blocked by sending from the same location
as a spammer.  That block may be temporary if the sending machine
falls into trouble but is then corrected.

Sometimes mail is simply delayed.  All Mail Transport Agents throttle
activity when the machine is overloaded.  Sometimes machines become
overloaded becaues spammers are bombarding the system with spam where
it gets overloaded to the point of being a denial of service.  One
must be patient and wait for the servers to be able to process the
mail.  Things will be delayed but will eventually get through.

Another problem is that large messages are very bad for big mailing
lists.  There are ~1600 users on this mailing list.  If someone sends
a large image it really consumes massive bandwidth through the
multiplication to all of the subscribers.  I think the mailing list
server is the biggest bandwidth consumer.  Also many people are using
metered network bandwidth plans and large images for messages they
might not care about can cost them real money.  Therefore large
messages are always at the least held for moderation and may be
automatically rejected.  Please don't send large images to big mailing
lists.  Instead upload the image to one of the many image sites and
then simply post a link to it.  That way people who are interested can
visit the link and others who are not can skip it and the bandwidth
being donated to the FSF is not consumed.

If you ever need help with the mailing lists such as to subscribe or
unsubscribe and cannot use the automated lilypond-user-request address
then write to the human helpers at lilypond-user-owner address.  You
can see the pattern in these.  The program reads and responds to the
-request address, just add -request to any mailing list address part.
Humans read the -owner address, just add -owner to any mailing list
address part.

Then additionally the Gmail interface has some interesting
interactions with mailing lists.  Gmail tags messages with Sent but
not Inbox.  But if someone replies then the reply will bring the
thread in because of the reply.  Its rather confusing.

I have forwarded that missing email message-id to the FSF admins and
asked them to please look for the message.

Hope this helps!
Bob