[Mailman-Users] Somebody could not subscribe to pypy-dev at python.org

[Mark Sapiro]

On 04/21/2015 09:53 PM, Laura Creighton wrote:
> In a message of Tue, 21 Apr 2015 16:31:46 -0700, Mark Sapiro writes:
>> On 04/21/2015 03:55 PM, Laura Creighton wrote:
>>> Forwarded message here.  He just tried to subscribe as ben.jolitz at xad.com
>>> but apparantly can only subscribe if he leaves the password field blank.
>>>
>>> It is, of course, working just fine for me.
>>
>>
>> And it has nothing to do with the password being blank.
> 
> Thank you Mark.  Maybe we need a longer, more descriptive error message
> for when that happens?


Actually, the scenario I posed is not correct. If it were, the message
would have said "The form is too old.  Please GET it again.". There are
three possibilities. If the form was gotten more than an hour before
submission, the message is as above. If it was gotten less than 5
seconds before submission (i.e., by a robot), the message is "Please
take a few seconds to fill out the form before submitting it."

The message your user got, "You must GET the form before submitting
it.", indicates the hidden 'sub_form_token' either was not present in
the submitted form or was not of the correct format. This could indicate
that there is a subscribe form for pypy-dev on some web site somewhere
that does not generate a correct 'sub_form_token'. Basically, such 3rd
party subscribe forms are intentionally disabled by this feature because
otherwise they could be submitted by robots.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan