[pydotorg-www] Help with mailing lists?

[Barry Warsaw]

CC'ing in postmaster.

On Dec 23, 2014, at 05:56 AM, Ned Batchelder wrote:

>I needed some help with some mail lists at mail.python.org: I need a password
>reminder, but never got one, and I have some questions about creating a new
>list.

I just tried it with the 'playground' mailing list and it worked just fine.  I
got the password reminder within minutes.  FWIW, the playground list is just
that, a dummy list that the postmasters can use to experiment with the live
Mailman system on mpo.  I'm not sure why you haven't gotten you password
reminder.

>The page at http://mail.python.org says, "If you are having trouble using the
>lists, please contact mailman at python.org <mailto:mailman at python.org>," so I
>sent my questions there.

That's pretty much a canned listinfo overview page.  We could hack that to
explicitly name postmaster at python.org.  mailman at python.org is the site list,
and until just now, only myself and Ralf were members of that list, and my
delivery is disabled.  I just added postmaster at python.org to that mailing
list, so it should forward everything to the postmasters.

>I got an automated response email that said that no one will answer, and to
>write to postmaster at python.org.  I forwarded my questions there.

Yep, that's Mailman's replybot.

>I got an automated response email in German that said to send requests to
>postmaster at charite.de. So I forwarded my questions there.

Yep, that's probably Ralf's replybot. ;)

>I got an automated response email (in German and English!) that said, "Thank
>you for your email. We'll work on email issues right away, all other issues
>will be ignored."  I don't know if my questions are considered email issues
>or not, so I don't know how long to wait before trying something else.
>
>What should I do now?  Any ideas who I can contact? Things seem broken on a
>number of levels.

postmaster at python.org is the right place ultimately for all things email for
python.org.  I'm not sure whether the postmasters read pydotorg-www.  As MAL
points out, it's the typical slow holiday season, so response may be delayed.

Cheers,
-Barry