Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Thank you. We're in a lengthy process of migrating the Winedale mailing list from Wikimedia mail services. This will probably help us motivate the stragglers.
Mike
On Monday, August 24, 2015, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn <dzahn@wikimedia.org javascript:;> Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Hi,
we (wikimedia-de-by) have the problem that since ~1 year the moderation front-end doesn't work anymore… https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/admindb/wikimedia-de-by shows "Bug in Mailman version 2.1.13 We're sorry, we hit a bug!". Maybe other lists have this problem too?
Regards, M
Am Montag, den 24.08.2015, 13:33 -0700 schrieb Daniel Zahn:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 2:43 PM, Michael F. michael@schoenitzer.de wrote:
we (wikimedia-de-by) have the problem that since ~1 year the moderation front-end doesn't work anymore…
We just fixed this error. -> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T110427
the "requests.pck" file was corrupt.
You can open https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/admindb/wikimedia-de-by again and use it as normal.
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish car-fr-l@lists.wikimedia.org
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Yes: Several lists have been receiving mass subscription requests, from hyphenated random e-mail addresses.
A.
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 11:13 AM, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish car-fr-l@lists.wikimedia.org
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Thanks for the reply. Can someone please confirm the best is to do nothing, i.e. to just wait for the spam to be deleted on the server? Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-28 7:22 GMT+02:00 Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org:
Yes: Several lists have been receiving mass subscription requests, from hyphenated random e-mail addresses.
A.
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 11:13 AM, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish car-fr-l@lists.wikimedia.org
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
The best thing to do is to manage moderation queues, deleting spam and approving emails as they come. Leaving spam does nothing but gives false statistics for us to read into. As we will eventually be looking at lists and moderation queues and if lists repeatedly have large queues, we will either assume their inactive, spam targets or need new moderators.
Leaving emails in moderation is extremely bad practise as it increases work to find legitimate emails, decreases the chance that they will be sent to the list in an appropriate time and add delay to server side operations as the directories increase in size.
In my opinion, moderators who leave emails in the queue because it's spam, aren't doing a just or a service to anyone and I would encourage them to either give up their responsibilities or have list admins be more active over the matter and remove them. It's the same as on wikis, if you see spam or vandalism - do you leave it or do you remove it? Lists are no different except you have to be trusted to have the ability to prevent and remove them.
Also spam filters do learn from your actions! If you discard mail from a domain or emails of a similar pattern, the filter will then learn from it and rank emails higher. While if we delete it server side, the filters are no trained and it means more spam will be allowed to the moderators (though it depends if filters exist to prevent high scoring spam are implemented in the right place!).
John Lewis
On Saturday, 29 August 2015, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for the reply. Can someone please confirm the best is to do nothing, i.e. to just wait for the spam to be deleted on the server? Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-28 7:22 GMT+02:00 Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','abartov@wikimedia.org');>:
Yes: Several lists have been receiving mass subscription requests, from hyphenated random e-mail addresses.
A.
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 11:13 AM, R. Acconish <racconish@gmail.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','racconish@gmail.com');> wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','car-fr-l@lists.wikimedia.org');
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller <dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com');>:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn <dzahn@wikimedia.org javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','dzahn@wikimedia.org');> wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn <dzahn@wikimedia.org javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','dzahn@wikimedia.org');> Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org'); https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org'); https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org'); https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org'); https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Thanks John, I had actually been deleting all the spam, but started to wonder if it was not silly :) Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-29 17:50 GMT+02:00 John Lewis johnflewis93@gmail.com:
The best thing to do is to manage moderation queues, deleting spam and approving emails as they come. Leaving spam does nothing but gives false statistics for us to read into. As we will eventually be looking at lists and moderation queues and if lists repeatedly have large queues, we will either assume their inactive, spam targets or need new moderators.
Leaving emails in moderation is extremely bad practise as it increases work to find legitimate emails, decreases the chance that they will be sent to the list in an appropriate time and add delay to server side operations as the directories increase in size.
In my opinion, moderators who leave emails in the queue because it's spam, aren't doing a just or a service to anyone and I would encourage them to either give up their responsibilities or have list admins be more active over the matter and remove them. It's the same as on wikis, if you see spam or vandalism - do you leave it or do you remove it? Lists are no different except you have to be trusted to have the ability to prevent and remove them.
Also spam filters do learn from your actions! If you discard mail from a domain or emails of a similar pattern, the filter will then learn from it and rank emails higher. While if we delete it server side, the filters are no trained and it means more spam will be allowed to the moderators (though it depends if filters exist to prevent high scoring spam are implemented in the right place!).
John Lewis
On Saturday, 29 August 2015, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for the reply. Can someone please confirm the best is to do nothing, i.e. to just wait for the spam to be deleted on the server? Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-28 7:22 GMT+02:00 Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org:
Yes: Several lists have been receiving mass subscription requests, from hyphenated random e-mail addresses.
A.
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 11:13 AM, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- John Lewis
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
It is not silly at all :) in fact it does a lot of good and helps train filters. The thing we want to achieve here is to get all lists to a point where spam is under control so we know spam that comes into the system past the filters and local rules, then get categorised as such. Lists with thousands of spam emails means legitimate contributions are losing out or thousands or spam emails are not going into to be trained.
To all that do moderate emails and so on, great. Keep it up, it really does help and is not 5 minutes of your day wasted!
John
On Saturday, 29 August 2015, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks John, I had actually been deleting all the spam, but started to wonder if it was not silly :) Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-29 17:50 GMT+02:00 John Lewis <johnflewis93@gmail.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','johnflewis93@gmail.com');>:
The best thing to do is to manage moderation queues, deleting spam and approving emails as they come. Leaving spam does nothing but gives false statistics for us to read into. As we will eventually be looking at lists and moderation queues and if lists repeatedly have large queues, we will either assume their inactive, spam targets or need new moderators.
Leaving emails in moderation is extremely bad practise as it increases work to find legitimate emails, decreases the chance that they will be sent to the list in an appropriate time and add delay to server side operations as the directories increase in size.
In my opinion, moderators who leave emails in the queue because it's spam, aren't doing a just or a service to anyone and I would encourage them to either give up their responsibilities or have list admins be more active over the matter and remove them. It's the same as on wikis, if you see spam or vandalism - do you leave it or do you remove it? Lists are no different except you have to be trusted to have the ability to prevent and remove them.
Also spam filters do learn from your actions! If you discard mail from a domain or emails of a similar pattern, the filter will then learn from it and rank emails higher. While if we delete it server side, the filters are no trained and it means more spam will be allowed to the moderators (though it depends if filters exist to prevent high scoring spam are implemented in the right place!).
John Lewis
On Saturday, 29 August 2015, R. Acconish <racconish@gmail.com javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','racconish@gmail.com');> wrote:
Thanks for the reply. Can someone please confirm the best is to do nothing, i.e. to just wait for the spam to be deleted on the server? Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-28 7:22 GMT+02:00 Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org:
Yes: Several lists have been receiving mass subscription requests, from hyphenated random e-mail addresses.
A.
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 11:13 AM, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
> Hello list admins, > > we have found that globally we had over half a million > mails in mailman lists that were not moderated. > > So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not > accepted or discarded. > > We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then > moved to (older than 6 months). > > We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this > automatically in the background. > > Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older > than 90 days. > > Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this > affects your list. > > Thank you and best regards, > > Daniel > -- > Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org > Operations Engineer > > _______________________________________________ > Listadmins mailing list > Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins >
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- John Lewis
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org'); https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 5:50 PM, John Lewis johnflewis93@gmail.com wrote:
The best thing to do is to manage moderation queues, deleting spam and approving emails as they come. Leaving spam does nothing but gives false statistics for us to read into. As we will eventually be looking at lists and moderation queues and if lists repeatedly have large queues, we will either assume their inactive, spam targets or need new moderators.
Leaving emails in moderation is extremely bad practise as it increases work to find legitimate emails, decreases the chance that they will be sent to the list in an appropriate time and add delay to server side operations as the directories increase in size.
In my opinion, moderators who leave emails in the queue because it's spam, aren't doing a just or a service to anyone and I would encourage them to either give up their responsibilities or have list admins be more active over the matter and remove them. It's the same as on wikis, if you see spam or vandalism - do you leave it or do you remove it? Lists are no different except you have to be trusted to have the ability to prevent and remove them.
Also spam filters do learn from your actions! If you discard mail from a domain or emails of a similar pattern, the filter will then learn from it and rank emails higher. While if we delete it server side, the filters are no trained and it means more spam will be allowed to the moderators (though it depends if filters exist to prevent high scoring spam are implemented in the right place!).
I've been involved in managing a few low-traffic mailing lists (including @wikimedia) where:
* The advertisement of the list states "you must be subscribed". * Generally the moderation queue is full of spam and just piles up. * The moderators will only clear stuff out in exceptional cases. E.g. when they themselves CC'd the list on some other list, and had follow-up replies.
So piling up moderation queues can be a symptom of a list that's run as a soft "subscribers only" list.
It doesn't mean that the list is inactive, the only problem is that the queue just sits there getting bigger, but such lists would be fine with it being purged after some period.
Now admittedly the list I moderate @wikimedia for the Icelandic Wikipedia (that caused me to notice this thread) is very inactive now, but I just thought I'd point out that it isn't always the case that just because you have a list with a piling up moderation queue that the list is mismanaged. It may just be run by a community where the list is advertised as subscriber-only, but the moderators would rather not flatout reject non-subscriber messages via a mail policy (e.g. for the CC-ing other lists case, or if a community member asks where their mail went).
On Saturday, 29 August 2015, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Thanks for the reply. Can someone please confirm the best is to do nothing, i.e. to just wait for the spam to be deleted on the server? Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-28 7:22 GMT+02:00 Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org:
Yes: Several lists have been receiving mass subscription requests, from hyphenated random e-mail addresses.
A.
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 11:13 AM, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Asaf Bartov Wikimedia Foundation
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- John Lewis
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Racconish, we had the same problem a year or so back on enwiki's arbcom-l. We resolved it by turning off subscription requests (the thinking was that a listadmin would always subscribe the new members anyway). Would recommend you do the same.
On 27 August 2015 at 19:13, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Thanks Anthony, will discuss it with the other admin of the list. Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-29 12:29 GMT+02:00 Anthony wikiagk@gmail.com:
Racconish, we had the same problem a year or so back on enwiki's arbcom-l. We resolved it by turning off subscription requests (the thinking was that a listadmin would always subscribe the new members anyway). Would recommend you do the same.
On 27 August 2015 at 19:13, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are
much
higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Anthony
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Anthony, Can you please explain how to turn off subscription requests ? Thanks, Racconish
2015-08-29 12:29 GMT+02:00 Anthony wikiagk@gmail.com:
Racconish, we had the same problem a year or so back on enwiki's arbcom-l. We resolved it by turning off subscription requests (the thinking was that a listadmin would always subscribe the new members anyway). Would recommend you do the same.
On 27 August 2015 at 19:13, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are
much
higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Anthony
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Regarding the large amount of spam subscription requests (which I've encountered as well on the global-renamers queue) enabling "Confirm and approve" subscription in the privacy section (which requires potential subscribers to confirm through a link in their mail) seems to have worked for me.
I believe that by unlisting the mailing list ("Advertise this list when people ask what lists are on this machine?") you block all subscriptions, though I'm not certain.
Savh
-----Original Message----- From: "R. Acconish" racconish@gmail.com Sent: 29/08/2015 18:21 To: "Announcements for mailing list admins" listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [List admins] deleting unmoderated messages after 90 days
Anthony,
Can you please explain how to turn off subscription requests ?
Thanks,
Racconish
2015-08-29 12:29 GMT+02:00 Anthony wikiagk@gmail.com:
Racconish, we had the same problem a year or so back on enwiki's arbcom-l. We resolved it by turning off subscription requests (the thinking was that a listadmin would always subscribe the new members anyway). Would recommend you do the same.
On 27 August 2015 at 19:13, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an abnormal amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails not getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are much higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Anthony
_______________________________________________ Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
I actually forgot my password.......
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 6:35 AM, Savh savh.wiki@yahoo.es wrote:
Regarding the large amount of spam subscription requests (which I've encountered as well on the global-renamers queue) enabling "Confirm and approve" subscription in the privacy section (which requires potential subscribers to confirm through a link in their mail) seems to have worked for me.
I believe that by unlisting the mailing list ("Advertise this list when people ask what lists are on this machine?") you block all subscriptions, though I'm not certain.
Savh
From: R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com Sent: 29/08/2015 18:21 To: Announcements for mailing list admins listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [List admins] deleting unmoderated messages after 90 days
Anthony, Can you please explain how to turn off subscription requests ? Thanks, Racconish
2015-08-29 12:29 GMT+02:00 Anthony wikiagk@gmail.com:
Racconish, we had the same problem a year or so back on enwiki's arbcom-l. We resolved it by turning off subscription requests (the thinking was that a listadmin would always subscribe the new members anyway). Would recommend you do the same.
On 27 August 2015 at 19:13, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Don't know if this is related but car-fr-l has been receiving an
abnormal
amount of subscription requests for the last 3 days. Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-25 17:58 GMT+02:00 Doug Weller dougwellerarbcom@gmail.com:
This is scary, as it suggests that there must be some genuine emails
not
getting through. If there are particular lists where the numbers are
much
higher than others than perhaps we should be told. Doug Weller
On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 9:33 PM, Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Daniel Zahn dzahn@wikimedia.org Operations Engineer
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Anthony
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
On 29 August 2015 at 17:20, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony, Can you please explain how to turn off subscription requests ?
Hi Racconish – as Savh says, within the admin interface: Privacy options > Subscription rules > "What steps are required for subscription?" and change to "Confirm and approve."
Turning off the advertised status of the list also helps: it is a private list so it probably doesn't need to be advertised, in any case.
Hope this helps, Anthony
Thanks Anthony and Savh. We just followed your advice and shall report here for the benefit of others what happens. Now concerning the advertised status, I am not sure what you mean. The collective email is indicated on our wiki to help contributors contact the arbcom if they wish, and I don't think this should be removed. Do you have in mind anothet kind of advertised status ? Cheers, Racconish
2015-08-31 1:00 GMT+02:00 Anthony wikiagk@gmail.com:
On 29 August 2015 at 17:20, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony, Can you please explain how to turn off subscription requests ?
Hi Racconish – as Savh says, within the admin interface: Privacy options > Subscription rules > "What steps are required for subscription?" and change to "Confirm and approve."
Turning off the advertised status of the list also helps: it is a private list so it probably doesn't need to be advertised, in any case.
Hope this helps, Anthony
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Happy to report we have not received any spamming request for subscription since implementing the changes you suggested. Thanks again, Racconish
2015-08-31 1:00 GMT+02:00 Anthony wikiagk@gmail.com:
On 29 August 2015 at 17:20, R. Acconish racconish@gmail.com wrote:
Anthony, Can you please explain how to turn off subscription requests ?
Hi Racconish – as Savh says, within the admin interface: Privacy options > Subscription rules > "What steps are required for subscription?" and change to "Confirm and approve."
Turning off the advertised status of the list also helps: it is a private list so it probably doesn't need to be advertised, in any case.
Hope this helps, Anthony
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
This may be an excellent corpus to analyse the kind of spam received by WMF lists and prepare some global rules. Generally mailman thas a great job filtering just by ensuring mails come from suscriptors, and I bet 98% of what's waiting is unwanted. Some ham will have been triggered by the "body too big" rule, and there's the occasional subscriptor that replies with the wrong account, but it's mostly content we are really not interested in.
Some address found to have been spamming many of our lists, and not being subscribed to any (to rule out a cross-posting wikimedia) should be added to a global discard/reject list. In fact it is a pity that we don't keep a global remitent blacklist and several list admins need to review their crap, each one on its queue.
We could simply have a milter that adds a "X-WM-sender-type: spammer" header (an opposite X-WM-sender-type: contributor could be used, too), and opting out would be as simple as removing the filter that discarded it by default.
Yes, I consider such configurated would have to be provided by default. In fact, there's a SpamAssassin scoring emails that we could take better advantage of, but I'm not that in any has it configured. Again, it'd be interested to gather stats about the spaminess score given to such presumedly-spam corpus.
In general, we are fighting list spam standalone, with very little coordination. Plus, I'm sure we can better use our tools.
For instance just, automatically holding emails from: ^info@ ^.*-owner@ (I should probably have added noreply, too)
did wonders for improving the cleanliness of certain list accepting non-members posts.
Sidenote to list owners: Please delete any subscriptions of my email to this list using plus aliases. They work very well for organising what comes from mailman (mailman-owner addressed mail, retentions, bots crawling the address…) but interact badly with this list as I was multiple subscripted, since -when combined with gmail "feature" of delivering just a single email- emails from this list may randomly arrive on any of several list administrative folders. For instance, Daniel original email was filled as related to mediawiki-l. And I spent some time looking where Patrick email had gone before discovering that it wasn't in the archives :P
See also https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T58525 and https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lists.wikimedia.org#Fighting_spam_in_mai...
On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 5:50 PM, Platonides platonides@gmail.com wrote:
This may be an excellent corpus to analyse the kind of spam received by WMF lists and prepare some global rules. Generally mailman thas a great job filtering just by ensuring mails come from suscriptors, and I bet 98% of what's waiting is unwanted. Some ham will have been triggered by the "body too big" rule, and there's the occasional subscriptor that replies with the wrong account, but it's mostly content we are really not interested in.
Some address found to have been spamming many of our lists, and not being subscribed to any (to rule out a cross-posting wikimedia) should be added to a global discard/reject list. In fact it is a pity that we don't keep a global remitent blacklist and several list admins need to review their crap, each one on its queue.
We could simply have a milter that adds a "X-WM-sender-type: spammer" header (an opposite X-WM-sender-type: contributor could be used, too), and opting out would be as simple as removing the filter that discarded it by default.
Yes, I consider such configurated would have to be provided by default. In fact, there's a SpamAssassin scoring emails that we could take better advantage of, but I'm not that in any has it configured. Again, it'd be interested to gather stats about the spaminess score given to such presumedly-spam corpus.
In general, we are fighting list spam standalone, with very little coordination. Plus, I'm sure we can better use our tools.
For instance just, automatically holding emails from: ^info@ ^.*-owner@ (I should probably have added noreply, too)
did wonders for improving the cleanliness of certain list accepting non-members posts.
Sidenote to list owners: Please delete any subscriptions of my email to this list using plus aliases. They work very well for organising what comes from mailman (mailman-owner addressed mail, retentions, bots crawling the address…) but interact badly with this list as I was multiple subscripted, since -when combined with gmail "feature" of delivering just a single email- emails from this list may randomly arrive on any of several list administrative folders. For instance, Daniel original email was filled as related to mediawiki-l. And I spent some time looking where Patrick email had gone before discovering that it wasn't in the archives :P
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Functionaries and the main en.WIki arbitration list are getting a lot of spam right now, with quite a few common domains.
I'm not sure why I couple of related lists I moderate only get bounces. Doug
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 12:01 AM, Tilman Bayer tbayer@wikimedia.org wrote:
See also https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T58525 and
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lists.wikimedia.org#Fighting_spam_in_mai...
On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 5:50 PM, Platonides platonides@gmail.com wrote:
This may be an excellent corpus to analyse the kind of spam received by
WMF
lists and prepare some global rules. Generally mailman thas a great job filtering just by ensuring mails come from suscriptors, and I bet 98% of what's waiting is unwanted. Some ham
will
have been triggered by the "body too big" rule, and there's the
occasional
subscriptor that replies with the wrong account, but it's mostly content
we
are really not interested in.
Some address found to have been spamming many of our lists, and not being subscribed to any (to rule out a cross-posting wikimedia) should be
added to
a global discard/reject list. In fact it is a pity that we don't keep a global remitent blacklist and several list admins need to review their crap, each one on its queue.
We could simply have a milter that adds a "X-WM-sender-type: spammer"
header
(an opposite X-WM-sender-type: contributor could be used, too), and
opting
out would be as simple as removing the filter that discarded it by
default.
Yes, I consider such configurated would have to be provided by default.
In
fact, there's a SpamAssassin scoring emails that we could take better advantage of, but I'm not that in any has it configured. Again, it'd be interested to gather stats about the spaminess score given to such presumedly-spam corpus.
In general, we are fighting list spam standalone, with very little coordination. Plus, I'm sure we can better use our tools.
For instance just, automatically holding emails from: ^info@ ^.*-owner@ (I should probably have added noreply, too)
did wonders for improving the cleanliness of certain list accepting non-members posts.
Sidenote to list owners: Please delete any subscriptions of my email to
this
list using plus aliases. They work very well for organising what comes
from
mailman (mailman-owner addressed mail, retentions, bots crawling the address…) but interact badly with this list as I was multiple
subscripted,
since -when combined with gmail "feature" of delivering just a single
email-
emails from this list may randomly arrive on any of several list administrative folders. For instance, Daniel original email was filled as related to mediawiki-l. And I spent some time looking where Patrick email had gone before discovering that it wasn't in the archives :P
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
-- Tilman Bayer Senior Analyst Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
On 27/08/15 17:25, Doug Weller wrote:
Functionaries and the main en.WIki arbitration list are getting a lot of spam right now, with quite a few common domains.
I'm not sure why I couple of related lists I moderate only get bounces. Doug
Email address exposure. I'm not sure right now, but one of the lists barely had any spam, which I think was due that we had customized the interface not to plainly show the list email (this was before the common mailman style change).
If they are just a few, known domains, it should be easy to add a discard filter for them. Feel free to PM me with details.
Regards
On 27 August 2015 at 13:32, Platonides platonides@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/08/15 17:25, Doug Weller wrote:
Functionaries and the main en.WIki arbitration list are getting a lot of spam right now, with quite a few common domains.
I'm not sure why I couple of related lists I moderate only get bounces. Doug
Email address exposure. I'm not sure right now, but one of the lists barely had any spam, which I think was due that we had customized the interface not to plainly show the list email (this was before the common mailman style change).
If they are just a few, known domains, it should be easy to add a discard filter for them. Feel free to PM me with details.
Discards are all well and good, and do reduce the work of moderators to sort out useful emails from spam. However, if the list has "notify list administrators of new emails" turned on - which is the normal setting, because many lists don't get that many emails and moderators need to know when it's time to moderate - then they will still get an email message for every deleted, rejected, discarded, or held email. The functionaries-en mailing list regularly gets over 100 spams a day; many of the originating email addressed and domains have been set to auto-discard, but we still get the emails telling us about it.
In an ideal world, list admins would be able to select receiving emails only for held messages and not those that are autodiscarded.
Risker/Anne
There is a need to improve the mailing system to follow SPF records, it doesn't matter if you remove plain email addresses from the interface or not, because most of them are already shown plainly on wikis, but also when it was used plainly once, it never come back.
Still not clear about the bounces - which conveniently Gmail bundles up. Doug
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 6:39 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
On 27 August 2015 at 13:32, Platonides platonides@gmail.com wrote:
On 27/08/15 17:25, Doug Weller wrote:
Functionaries and the main en.WIki arbitration list are getting a lot of spam right now, with quite a few common domains.
I'm not sure why I couple of related lists I moderate only get bounces. Doug
Email address exposure. I'm not sure right now, but one of the lists barely had any spam, which I think was due that we had customized the interface not to plainly show the list email (this was before the common mailman style change).
If they are just a few, known domains, it should be easy to add a discard filter for them. Feel free to PM me with details.
Discards are all well and good, and do reduce the work of moderators to sort out useful emails from spam. However, if the list has "notify list administrators of new emails" turned on - which is the normal setting, because many lists don't get that many emails and moderators need to know when it's time to moderate - then they will still get an email message for every deleted, rejected, discarded, or held email. The functionaries-en mailing list regularly gets over 100 spams a day; many of the originating email addressed and domains have been set to auto-discard, but we still get the emails telling us about it.
In an ideal world, list admins would be able to select receiving emails only for held messages and not those that are autodiscarded.
Risker/Anne
Listadmins mailing list Listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/listadmins
Le 24/08/2015 22:33, Daniel Zahn a écrit :
Hello list admins,
we have found that globally we had over half a million mails in mailman lists that were not moderated.
So that means they got held in the moderation queues but were not accepted or discarded.
We have started deleting the oldest ones first (over 1 year old) then moved to (older than 6 months).
We are planning to setup an automated cron job to do this automatically in the background.
Currently the plan is to delete all messages that are held and older than 90 days.
Please let us know if any concerns and moderate a bit more if this affects your list.
Thank you and best regards,
Daniel
Hello,
Have you analyzed the list destinations? That might just be from a few lists that are abandoned and that nobody ever moderated.
There might be some subscribed bot / cronjob spamming a few lists as well. Would be nice to track them down and fix the problems.
listadmins@lists.wikimedia.org