Questions about Content Filtering
Hi folks, I am not very technically inclined and I'm the co- listkeeper for a group. We have had some problems lately and we were wondering what would happen if we made changes to the Content Filtering section of the Admin page?
If : multipart/mixed multipart/alternative were removed would the listkeepers, as owners of the group receive bounces from everyone who tried to send formatted text?
If these two lines were changed from "Yes" to "No" what would happen?
Should Mailman collapse multipart/alternative to its first part content? No Yes X<http://lists.oso-aa.org/mailman/admin/grow/?VARHELP=contentfilter/collapse_alternatives>
Should Mailman convert text/html parts to plain text? This conversion happens after MIME attachments have been stripped. No Yes X
Examples of our current problem:
1.This  at the end of every sentence & inserted in several places in sentences: Louise can't get email.Â
One continuous paragraph arrives when the sender had made appropriate paragraphs
Complete gibberish: MLN13:46 UTCâ4 \Ý[]Z\NÚ\YHÛÛH\Ú\YP@arthlink.net> Ø]°ê\Ù[ÛÛYHÈÔÕÎ[\Ü\HMentor hi from Jessi first nine days
Hi Sherrie
Day 10 :) Fæ²÷Rf÷"6V6¶ærââÆ÷fRFRw&÷W. Reading the threads in my inbox every day <http://lists.oso-aa.org/mailman/admin/grow/?VARHELP=contentfilter/convert_html_to_plaintext>
Are these problems caused by many people now using cell phones & tablets to send email?
Thank you for your patience & any help you might provide.
Nancy
At Wed, 20 Aug 2014 09:34:17 -0300 Nancy <cybergram@eastlink.ca> wrote:
Hi folks, I am not very technically inclined and I'm the co- listkeeper for a group. We have had some problems lately and we were wondering what would happen if we made changes to the Content Filtering section of the Admin page?
If : multipart/mixed multipart/alternative were removed would the listkeepers, as owners of the group receive bounces from everyone who tried to send formatted text?
If these two lines were changed from "Yes" to "No" what would happen?
Should Mailman collapse multipart/alternative to its first part content? No Yes X<http://lists.oso-aa.org/mailman/admin/grow/?VARHELP=contentfilter/collapse_alternatives>
Should Mailman convert text/html parts to plain text? This conversion happens after MIME attachments have been stripped. No Yes X
The *best* option would be to:
- reject (or moderate) 'pure' HTML messages.
- Strip text/HTML parts off. Most (all?) *decent* E-Mail clients send both a text/plain and a text/HTML version of the message (multipart/alternative). Generally, the text/plain is 'sufficient' -- it contains the *text* of the message, without the (unnecessary!) formatting (eg fonts, colors, etc.). *Some* mailers deal with 'bold' using old-school ASCII tricks (like *this is bold*).
Unfortunately, many mailers / computers (including cell phones and tablets), use non-ASCII character sets (not that they need them really, esp. for *American* English), so lots of 'common' characters like quote marks, aposthophes, and some other puncuation characters show up as UTF-8 characters that don't display well with 7-bit ASCII mailer programs.
Examples of our current problem:
1.This  at the end of every sentence & inserted in several places in sentences: Louise can't get email.Â
- One continuous paragraph arrives when the sender had made appropriate paragraphs
Unfortunately, many modern E-Mail clients no longer insert line breaks and expect the *receiving* E-Mail client to 'wrap' lines, depending on the display width. There is not much you can do about this, other than rant at the E-Mail client authors, who are not going to listen to you.
- Complete gibberish: MLN13:46 UTC−4 \Ý[]Z\NÚ\YHÛۙH\Ú\YP@arthlink.net> ؚ]°ê\Ù[ÛÛYHÈԓÕΈ[\ܘ\HMentor hi from Jessi first nine days
Hi Sherrie
Day 10 :) F沭÷Rf÷"6V6¶ærââÆ÷fRFRw&÷W. Reading the threads in my inbox every day <http://lists.oso-aa.org/mailman/admin/grow/?VARHELP=contentfilter/convert_html_to_plaintext>
Are these problems caused by many people now using cell phones & tablets to send email?
Thank you for your patience & any help you might provide.
Nancy
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/heller%40deepsoft.com
-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services heller@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services
Nancy writes:
If : multipart/mixed multipart/alternative were removed would the listkeepers, as owners of the group receive bounces from everyone who tried to send formatted text?
Whether the owners would receive notification depends on the filter_action (last option on that screen), which can be Discard (silently), Reject (and return to sender), Forward to List Owner, or Preserve (save in a special place for later use by list owners). Only in the "Forward" case will you get a notification.
As for "formatted text", that depends on what else is in pass_mime_types. If only text/plain is there, there is no way for HTML formatting to get in. However, it won't stop any of the problems you list below from occurring.
If these two lines were changed from "Yes" to "No" what would happen?
Should Mailman collapse multipart/alternative to its first part content? No Yes
Should Mailman convert text/html parts to plain text? This conversion happens after MIME attachments have been stripped. No Yes
If you remove the multipart lines from pass_mime_types, these two lines have no effect.
If you keep them, the effect depends on the sender, but normally the message will be converted to plain text. However, plain text may include "unusual" characters like those in your samples below.
I think you should try the following:
add text/html to pass_mime_types. Ie, it should read
multipart/mixed multipart/alternative text/plain text/html
set collapse/alternatives and convert_html_to_plaintext to no.
Of course this means that HTML formatted messages will pass through, but I wouldn't be surprised if the "mail programs for the rest of us" handle HTML better than they do plain text.
BTW, I don't think this specifically has anything to do with tablets or cellphones. Similar problems occur with email programs for PCs.
Examples of our current problem:
As far as I can tell your examples were corrupted in transmission (and then corrupted again when Robert quoted it -- it appears differently in his message.
For us to learn more about the problem, we need to see the problem messages, including all header and formatting material, preferably in two versions, both as received by the Mailman server, and as resent to list members by Mailman. Since message content is the problem, they should be verbatim, no editing at all, just resend the whole thing.
That's up to you, of course, and you should consider the privacy of your members. If you can get those copies, and you feel the content is sufficiently un-sensitive that the users wouldn't mind (or better, you can get permission) feel free to send them directly to me <stephen@xemacs.org> and Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> (this list is archived and available to the public, so your users' addresses and names would be Googleable -- best to avoid that).
Regards, Steve
participants (3)
-
Nancy -
Robert Heller -
Stephen J. Turnbull