[Mailman-Users] Gmail eats MM messages

[Ryan Steele]

Alan McConnell wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 14, 2007 at 12:56:41PM -0400, Ryan Steele wrote:
>   
>> Is it the case that since Mailman makes the posting look like it came 
>> from foobar at gmail.com (i.e., it's claiming to be that user), and since 
>> one of the recipients is foobar at gmail.com, that Google drops it at the 
>> gate and refuses to even handle it because it looks forged?  Has anybody 
>> else experienced this issue?
>>     
> 	Google/gmail is smarter than we are.  It "knows" that since
> 	foobar sent the message, foobar knows what is in the message,
> 	and therefore doesn't want it cluttering up his(foobar's) Inbox.
>
> I wrote a letter to the gmail honchos about this, which I reproduce
> below.  Of course I heard nothing.  But maybe if 5 or 50 or 500 of
> us wrote similar messages, something might happen . . .  ?
>   

Count me in for doing my part - I've written a similar letter:

To the folks at GMail:

It has been widely discussed and reported that mailing lists and GMail 
to not play nicely together.  For example, if I want to implement 
Mailman, one of the most (if not /the/ most) popular mailing list 
managers, I can expect NOT to receive a response to a list posting using 
my GMail account, if I happen to be a member of that list. 

Obviously, it's because you all either

A) consider the email forged when a message that claims to be from a 
GMail user seems to originate from another server's MTA (e.g., the mail 
server running Mailman), or

B) decide they shouldn't know that their posting was actually received 
by the mailing list by conveniently dropping any message which seems to 
have an identical copy in the Sent folder.

Now, I'm sure that you all consider it a "feature" that you drop it at 
the gate instead of sending it to the Inbox, or Spam folder, or anwhere 
else the user can identify as having "received" it, but those of us who 
use, administer, and run mailing list software do not find this to be 
either cute or a "feature", as many of us (and the general public) 
prefer not to follow threads both in the Inbox and the Sent folders.  
It's not as big of an issue if you've got a previous instance of the 
thread in your Inbox (e.g., you aren't the creator of the post thread), 
but this is an annoyance if you are.

I know that, up until this point, we've (the community, that is) 
received deafening silence on this issue, so I only find it fair to take 
the standard "David vs. Goliath" approach, and use my slingshot 
(blogging, and column in the local tech gazette) to toss stones.  Of 
course, if we could simply have the option of toggling off the "feature" 
that mandates we don't receive copies that are similar to those in our 
Sent boxes, that would be preferable for both parties, I'm sure. 

Thanks for your time!

Ryan Steele
Systems Administrator

> Alan, who enjoys p*ss*ng up waterfalls
>
>   

:-D My co-workers and I got a kick out of that signature!

> (start)------------------------------------
> I would like to have mail that I send to an E-list
> (aka list-serve, E-mail list) from my gmail account,
> accepted when it is sent back to me; it should appear
> in my Inbox.  (I get postings from other list members,
> so the list SW is OK).
>
> It must have taken effort for Gmail to send these messages
> to /dev/null.  I would like that effort to be undone.
>
> Many thanks in advance,
>
> Alan McConnell
>
>                                  --------------------------(finish)
>
>   


-- 
Ryan Steele                         
Systems Administrator               steele at agora-net.com
AgoraNet, Inc.                      (302) 224-2475
314 E. Main Street, Suite 1         (302) 224-2552 (fax)
Newark, DE 19711                    http://www.agora-net.com