Hi Abd, 

since you can not edit: 
I've posted a request in the colloquium: 
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Colloquium#WV:_Mailing_list_problem

Erkan
P.S. God save all people who survive


On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 9:44 PM, Abd ulRahman Lomax <abdlomax@yahoo.com> wrote:
Well, Cormaggio has not edited Wikipedia for more than a year. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/Cormaggio&action=view

He has not edited Wikiversity for almost two years. http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Cormaggio.

Cormaggio has been inactive everywhere in the WMF, at least through this unified log-in.

Sebmol is listed as a manager of this list as well. He has not edited Wikiversity since March 2011, when he noted he was inactive and was willing to be removed as a bureaucrat. http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Wikiversity:Community_Review/Abd&diff=prev&oldid=715970
Sebmol has been active on de. wikipedia, this year. Not much.

It's obvious. We don't have an active list moderator. The complaining account is indeed listed as a member receiving the digest.

If we get another echo from Harry, I'm going to take an action that might resolve the problem for him. I'm going to request a password restoration message in his name. If he responds to it, as he has to other messages, we might be able to fix this for him. Unorthodox, yes, but it will not do any actual harm to him, since he wants to be unsubscribed to all WMF lists, apparently. It risks revealing his password. Note that anyone could do this for any of us.... that's how the listserve works. I'm not using any special privilege. The password is mailed to the subscription address, and if the user responds to mails without looking at them, he's in danger anyway.

Of course, if he starts paying attention, he can indeed fix this himself, the listserv seems to be working normally.

I already requested unsubscription in his name. If he follows the instructions in that mail, he'll be unsubscribed and we won't hear from him again.

Meanwhile, the lack of list administration is a possible problem, this particular manifestation is relatively minor. We are probably losing subscribers over this, but only a list manager can tell, if they can access the logs.
 
I'd act to fix this, on-wiki, but ... I 'm still blocked from almost a year ago, the unblock template on my Talk page has no response, in spite of some request from the community, ignored. WV is, in many respects, dead. Such community as still exists stopped paying attention to central administrative matters, and so the technocrats rule, but they also lose interest, so in some areas, there is nobody ruling or acting. I basically gave up, given lack of purposeful community response supporting what I was doing. A majority isn't enough! When there is a lack of consensus on specific actions, admins have free reign, and policy doesn't matter. I was blocked for defending long-standing community policy on blocking. I'd just been desysopped outside of policy, as an "emergency" on meta. The emergency was that I'd acted, according to policy, reversing after discussion (once, not wheel-warring) a block of another user made by the 'crat who then requested the desysop, and, when a user changed the policy abusively, I requested custodian attention and was blocked for not other offense than civilly requesting attention.

And the block proved that the policy wasn't worth the paper it wasn't written on. The real policy: a 'crat can do whatever he likes, can block anyone he doesn't like. No consequences, and no appeal is of any use. And the 'crat doesn't need to be, at all, an active WV user, he can just pop in whenever.

I don't know where requests to add moderators are handled (meta?).

From: Erkan Yilmaz <erkan77@gmail.com>
To: Abd ulRahman Lomax <abdlomax@yahoo.com>; Mailing list for Wikiversity <wikiversity-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2012 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikiversity-l] Management of this mailing list

Harry had this request/game some time ago, where I tried to help him
not sure why he could not succeed

afaik: Cormac is mod of the mailing list, he should be able to do something about this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cormaggio

Erkan

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Abd ulRahman Lomax <abdlomax@yahoo.com> wrote:
The sequence reveals that no moderator is both monitoring this list and willing to respond to the request, and possibly the listserver is not working properly.

Yes, the user should be able to handle his own unsubscription and is being obtuse, repeating a message, insistently, to people who can't do anything about the situation, and perhaps not following instructions that come with every mail, or if he is, he is not requesting help, describing the specific problem encountered, he is merely demanding that someone DO SOMETHING TO FIX THIS!

A common reason would be that the user no longer has access to an account for sending mail, but is still receiving mail to that account. If that is the case here, then Harry isn't telling anyone what the account is. The complete headers from a list mail to him would show what's happening. (Below, I figure out that this is not the case here. It's commonly a case with open mailing lists, this list is, however, closed.)

STOP and all that does absolutely nothing. The instructions below do say how to unsubscribe. One of Harry's mails seems to be a response to a mail from wikiversity-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org and it looks like the subject was not created as instructed for unsubscription.

If Harry tells us what he has done, and what happened, we will then know more specifically what to do about it. I'm not personally going to file a complaint with the overall wikimedia.org listserver administration unless I can verify a problem. And they are quite likely, given the massive subscription lists, to ignore complaints written in all caps that don't provide adequate information.

To find out if the listserver is operating, I entered a number of commands through the web interface, which is *public*. I merely need enter the subscribed email address. The page is at https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiversity-l

On that page, in the "Wikiversity-l" subscribers section, after entering my subscribed email address, I pressed the "unsubscribe or edit options" button.

I got a member options page acknowledging my email address as a subscriber, and one of the buttons was unsubscribe. I pressed the unsubscribe button, and, after a few minutes' delay, I received a confirmation mail. If I had responded with no changes to that mail, I presume I'd have been unsubscribed. I'd forgotten my password, which is not needed for unsubscription, so I then pressed the password reminder button and my password was emailed to me. Using the password, I logged in to the member options page. There is also an immediate unsubscription option there (since they know it's you because you logged in with the password.)

So I did the same, using the Harry address from the mails. I then pressed an unsubscribe bottom, which, if Harry is a subscriber, would send him a confirmation mail, with instructions that, if followed carefully, will unsubscribe him. On the other hand, I tested this with a ridiculous subscription address. The interface does not reveal if the person is a subscriber or not.

If Harry does not receive a mail, he can then strongly infer that he is not, under this email address, subscribed to the list. That, then, means that *nobody* can help him, unless he provides the subscription mailing address.

However, it is very likely that Harry is a subscriber, because the list will reject mails from non-subscribers. I just tested that. Harry's mails, from his gmail address, are not being held for moderator approval. (If a moderator has set automatic approval, it would go through, but he'd also be getting the message held for approval message. I've seen a moderator set up automatic bounce approval when the moderation didn't want to surrender control but also didn't have the time to actually manage the list.)

Harry, when you are in the middle of an amygdala hijack, you may not be able to respond to instructions clearly. See if you can do whatever you know to do to relax, have some tea or coffee, get to a place of calm, and then try unsubscribing, reading everything carefully. You may find that this fixes the interface, in a way that shouting doesn't.

The amazing thing here is how long the hijack has lasted.

Plus, I'm getting that we don't have a moderator who is regularly watching this list and ready to fix problems.






From: Shujen Chang <i@blue.cat>
To: Mailing list for Wikiversity <wikiversity-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2012 8:28 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikiversity-l] Wikiversity-l Digest, Vol 58, Issue 4

You can just unsubscribe this mail list, if you do not want to receive any letters from the mail list again.


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Wikiversity-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiversity-l




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