Idea: Google Groups web interface for Ideas
As you may know, the python-ideas list is opened only to subscribers. This is inconvenient, because: 1. it requires three step subscription process 2. it is impossible to post a reply to existing thread/idea
There is a web-interface in Google Groups at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/python-ideas that can solve problems above and provide some more nifty features such as embedded search. But there comes another problem that messages posted through the group doesn't end in list, because list requires subscription. I've already tried to find a solution, but run out of time, so I summarized the proposal at http://wiki.python.org/moin/MailmanWithGoogleGroups
I may or may not be able to publish outcomes of my research, so it would be nice to get some help in investigating the problem and publishing a solution on aforementioned wiki page. Thanks.
On 12/27/2011 12:01 PM, anatoly techtonik wrote:
As you may know, the python-ideas list is opened only to subscribers. This is inconvenient, because:
- it requires three step subscription process
- it is impossible to post a reply to existing thread/idea
There is a web-interface in Google Groups at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/python-ideas https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/python-ideas that can solve problems above and provide some more nifty features such as embedded search. But there comes another problem that messages posted through the group doesn't end in list, because list requires subscription. I've already tried to find a solution, but run out of time, so I summarized the proposal at http://wiki.python.org/moin/MailmanWithGoogleGroups
I interact with this list as newsgroup gmane.comp.python.ideas via news.gmane.org. The first post, which can be (and usually should be) a reply to an existing post, requires that one respond to an email to the from address. This is the miminum necessary to protect from spam. No big deal.
Google mail and google groups are main gateways for spam on python list. We do not need that here.
On Wednesday, December 28, 2011 12:52:49 AM UTC+3, Terry Reedy wrote:
On 12/27/2011 12:01 PM, anatoly techtonik wrote:
As you may know, the python-ideas list is opened only to subscribers. This is inconvenient, because:
- it requires three step subscription process
- it is impossible to post a reply to existing thread/idea
There is a web-interface in Google Groups at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/python-ideas https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/python-ideas that can solve problems above and provide some more nifty features such as embedded search. But there comes another problem that messages posted through the group doesn't end in list, because list requires subscription. I've already tried to find a solution, but run out of time, so I summarized the proposal at http://wiki.python.org/moin/MailmanWithGoogleGroups
I interact with this list as newsgroup gmane.comp.python.ideas via news.gmane.org. The first post, which can be (and usually should be) a reply to an existing post, requires that one respond to an email to the from address. This is the miminum necessary to protect from spam. No big deal.
Google mail and google groups are main gateways for spam on python list. We do not need that here.
Does Mailman support confirmation for messages with high SPAM ratio?
There is already an Groups interface at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/python-ideas/ and if a person is not subscribed in Mailman, the message appears in Group, but doesn't appear in Mailman even after the person is finally subscribed (if that persons notices and understands Mailman bounce message instructing him to subscribe).
Somebody needs to put a notice about obligatory subscription to Mailman to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/python-ideas/ if nobody wants more tight groups integration.
On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 04:11, anatoly techtonik techtonik@gmail.com wrote:
Somebody needs to put a notice about obligatory subscription to Mailman to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/python-ideas/ if nobody wants more tight groups integration.
Whoever created that can put up the notice. I've never even heard of this Google Groups mirror to know who would be the one to do that.
I really do not think anything is going to happen here - it works fine for everyone else and the hundreds of other mailing lists on python.org as well as the thousands of mailing lists around the world. Responding to old threads seems to be your biggest point for this, but you can always start a new thread and say "bringing up this topic from 6 months ago", link the original thread, then restart discussion - that's acceptable.
On Dec 28, 2011, at 02:11 AM, anatoly techtonik wrote:
Does Mailman support confirmation for messages with high SPAM ratio?
Not out of the box, no.
First, spam detection is not Mailman's mission. This is better done with other tools in integration with an MTA. There could be some integration points with Mailman here, but it's not clear they are worth it, especially when other more interesting work could be done (e.g. DKIM, OpenPGP signatures, etc.). Of course, I welcome anyone interested to join us on mailman-developers@python.org if you want to discuss stuff like this further.
Cheers, -Barry
Barry Warsaw writes:
On Dec 28, 2011, at 02:11 AM, anatoly techtonik wrote:
Does Mailman support confirmation for messages with high SPAM ratio?
Not out of the box, no.
But it would be trivial to implement efficiently, I think, even in MM2, as long as there is a front-end (eg, spamassassin) that does the spam-checking efficiently.
First, spam detection is not Mailman's mission.
A big +1 to that, but I've had problems on the XEmacs lists with marginally spammy stuff. (Eg, one frequent contributor had a French-castle-guard+some-even-more-awful-Aussie-slang version of spook.el hooked up to Gnus, and he regularly ended up snagged by the "male potency enhancers" filter. But actual spam outnumbered his posts about 99 to 1. :^)
So you might want to let some spammy stuff through *to* Mailman, yet still have Mailman hold the spammy-ER stuff among that.
I don't know if Python lists ever have that kind of problem, though.
There could be some integration points with Mailman here, but it's not clear they are worth it,
For mailman-developers, I think it's preferable to teach people to fish (here, write and install simple Handlers), and provide a contrib page on the wiki for posting them.
On Jan 04, 2012, at 11:48 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Barry Warsaw writes:
On Dec 28, 2011, at 02:11 AM, anatoly techtonik wrote:
Does Mailman support confirmation for messages with high SPAM ratio?
Not out of the box, no.
But it would be trivial to implement efficiently, I think, even in MM2, as long as there is a front-end (eg, spamassassin) that does the spam-checking efficiently.
Right. If the front-end added some header containing a pattern that could be parsed for spamminess, it would be nearly trivial to write a handler that could make that determination and hold/discard/reject such a message. Skip (IIRC) and I once had a moderately-well working spambayes plugin for Mailman.
I don't know if Python lists ever have that kind of problem, though.
I don't think we have much of a spam problem on the lists these days. It used to be python-list got most of its spam through the Usenet gateway. Probably in another year or so all of the terms "Usenet", "spam", and "email" will produce a reaction in our young intarweb users much like the terms "vinyl records" and "land-line" do today. There's no problem that doesn't disappear if you ignore it long enough <wink>.
There could be some integration points with Mailman here, but it's not clear they are worth it,
For mailman-developers, I think it's preferable to teach people to fish (here, write and install simple Handlers), and provide a contrib page on the wiki for posting them.
Like all open source, contributions are welcome. :)
-Barry
On 1/4/2012 10:18 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
I don't know if Python lists ever have that kind of problem, though.
I don't think we have much of a spam problem on the lists these days. It used to be python-list got most of its spam through the Usenet gateway.
It still gets a few spam messages a day.
On Dec 27, 2011, at 09:01 AM, anatoly techtonik wrote:
As you may know, the python-ideas list is opened only to subscribers. This is inconvenient, because:
- it requires three step subscription process
- it is impossible to post a reply to existing thread/idea
There is a web-interface in Google Groups at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/python-ideas that can solve problems above and provide some more nifty features such as embedded search. But there comes another problem that messages posted through the group doesn't end in list, because list requires subscription. I've already tried to find a solution, but run out of time, so I summarized the proposal at http://wiki.python.org/moin/MailmanWithGoogleGroups
I disagree with some of the statements on that wiki page.
Most if not all of our mailing lists are mirrored on Gmane and very likely many other public archive sites. You can read and post to mailing lists through Gmane, after an initial verification dance, just like I'm doing here to this message.
The problem with search and "thread notifications" (if I understand the latter correctly) is a problem with Pipermail, not specifically Mailman even though the former is bundled with the latter. I've been begging people for at least a decade to help out with modernizing Pipermail, but the truth is that the state of the art in open source archivers has been abysmal for years.
OpenID/OpenAuth (maybe BrowserID, etc.) - come join us in the Mailman 3 project, and help us get things polished so we can release it.
I'd certainly welcome a Google Groups mirror of any of our mailing lists, just as I welcome mirrors on Gmane, The Mail Archive, etc. I do think our core technology ought to be open source, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't maximize the reach of these valuable assets of ours.
Cheers, -Barry
participants (5)
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anatoly techtonik -
Barry Warsaw -
Brian Curtin -
Stephen J. Turnbull -
Terry Reedy