Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 04:24:51 +1000 (EST) From: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> To: Thomas Mueller <mueller23@insightbb.com> Cc: Matthew Seaman <matthew@FreeBSD.org>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Address to reach human operator regarding problems with list? Message-ID: <20120531030256.G98171@sola.nimnet.asn.au> In-Reply-To: <20120530120033.C866410657C6@hub.freebsd.org> References: <20120530120033.C866410657C6@hub.freebsd.org>
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In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 417, Issue 4, Message: 26 On Wed, 30 May 2012 06:31:38 -0400 "Thomas Mueller" <mueller23@insightbb.com> wrote: [Matthew Seaman wrote:] > > freebsd-questions-owner@... is correct, except that to my knowledge > > there isn't really a moderator for freebsd-questions (it's an open list > > that anyone can post to without having to be a member) and that address > > ultimately gets dealt with by postmaster@freebsd.org. 'Ultimately' being operative; I gather it rather depends on workload. It does sound a little odd that writing to freebsd-questions-owner@ is interpreted as mail to a subs-only list (moderators@), which may be well down the TODO queue of the postmaster@ team. > > The message you got about "held for moderation" is standard boiler-plate > > from mailman, and probably not appropriate for your specific circumstances. I think mentioning the whole circumstance to postmaster@, including the result of posting to freebsd-questions-owner@ could be worthwhile; I wouldn't suggest every little mail issue should go to postmaster@, but apart from Tom's immediate problem, there may be a functional issue. > > On the whole though, you shouldn't need to contact anyone about the > > warning you received. It generally occurs when your mail system > > rejects messages from the freebsd-questions@... list as spam. As there > > is a certain amount of spam that does appear on the list, this is an > > absolutely legitimate practice: trouble is, it's hard for the FreeBSD > > mail system to distinguish deliberate non-acceptance of spam from > > accidental non-acceptance of traffic due to a broken mailer. Indeed. Considering the number of lists and the number of subscribers, I think mailman (and spamassassin recipes) do a great job, though it's always going to be a battle chasing the latest spammer techniques; the recent spamruns with multiple 'From:' addresses being a case in point, not a pretty look seeing spam 'apparently' by FreeBSD committers .. > > Mailman has an adaptive system that scores you based on how many rejects > > you generate in a certain time period. If you log into mailman at eg. > > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/options/freebsd-questions > > you can see your current score. Mine is currently 2.0 (out of 5.0) and > > has been about that for quite some time. So long as your score is not > > too large, I wouldn't worry about the message you received. Even if > > your score does go over the threshold, you can just use that same > > interface to re-enable delivery. I hadn't checked for ages, but see my score is now 1.0, probably from a couple of days downtime last month ie delayed delivery. This would help Tom see if mailman 'knows' anything about his problem, but not what was happening to cause that? > I contacted my Internet service provider, Insight Cable, about the > problem, and they need a copy of any message that bounces, so they > can see what went awry. Bit strange asking you to provide copies of messages you didn't get :) Are they providing your inbound MX server, ie is that where your mail is received? I gather you're not running your own mailserver. It should not be hard to find any such bounces from/to mx2.freebsd.org in their mail or spam logs, if it was they who bounced them? If not, who did? > So I can't just ignore the problem. I rather suspect that even if each bounce is logged at freebsd.org (and it might be some task to find yours, beyond that they've been counted), that it could be non-trivial to locate the offending source messages. Not impossible, Message-IDs are likely logged, but last-resort stuff. OTOH this may be something postmaster@ does routinely, what do I know :) > Maybe I should resend the message to postmaster@freebsd.org instead > of freebsd-questions-owner@freebsd.org? > > This problem relates to FreeBSD emailing lists in general, not just > one list such as questions@ . Yes, in this case I think you should, after exploring the options Matthew outlined. Be sure to show complete headers of any and all messages you need to forward to postmaster@. cheers, Ian
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