[WikiEN-l] Mailman software (was Re: Who's moderated?)

[Armed Blowfish]

On 07/09/2007, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/09/2007, Armed Blowfish <diodontida.armata at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> 1.  If a patch were to be written for Mailman-side killfiles,
>>     for individual users, would the patch be used?
>
> I don't know what a "killfile" is.

A killfile dates back to the nearly unmoderated USENET.
Sure, there was the USENET death penalty, but that
wasn't used very often.  A killfile basically allows individual
users to specify the addresses of those they do not wish to
received messages from.  Basically, what Marc and Peter
have been recommending, but instead of having to skim,
messages from people you don't like need never appear
before you.  You could also match by other criteria, e.g.
subject, other header info.

Any halfway decent email client should have some sort
of killfile implementation.  In Google Mail, for example,
this functionality is provided via filters.  However, since
some people might have bad email clients, this could
theoretically be done on Mailman's side as well, where
a user could log in to Mailman and ask Mailman to not
send him or her email matching certain criteria.  Note
that Mailman could only control email sent via the list
itself - only a client-side killfile could filter mail sent
directly to an individual.  Still, moderation can't do any
more than that anyway.

A killfile type system of message control would probably
work better if public archival were turned off, as public
archival may make users feel pressured to respond to
messages they would otherwise ignore.

>> 2.  If a patch were to be written for a user preference
>>     for a moderated user to be able to decide if s/he wants
>>     to appear on a public list of moderated users, would
>>     the patch be used? (The default could be set to 'no'.)
>
> I suppose, if the Wikimedia developers wanted to put something like
> that on, and people seemed to want it. Keep in mind there are a lot of
> things we'd like a patch for, and the Wikimedia developers haven't
> done anything about them up until now. Their interest in modding
> MailMan always seems pretty much nil, unfortunately.

Mailman was not written by Wikimedia
developers, but by Mailman developers -
the Wikimedia developers need not be
involved.  Besides, I am offering to try
to write the code, if you are interested
in having it, which would make me the
developer.  (Alternatively, I guess I could
just submit a feature request to the Mailman
project, but then there would be no
guarantee that anyone would try it, or
that they would try it any time soon.  Still,
it's a back up plan if I can't figure out
how the Mailman source tree works.)

(Note that it's Mailman, not MailMan.)

However, any such patch would most
likely be added to the development version
of Mailman, meaning the Wikimedia server
administrators would have to upgrade.  If you
don't think they could be talked into that,
and that you would use it, then I am most
likely not willing to spend my time on this.

>> 3.  Mailman already has the ability to not archive publicly.
>>     Would not archiving publicly reduce tension on the list?
>>     Should this option be changed?
>
> There's always that option, but the mailing list is already mirrored
> on other sites like Gmane too, and there's theoretically nothing
> stopping someone subscribing to the list and setting up their own
> public archive.

Gmane would theoretically stop mirroring if
you stopped archiving, no?  Of course, there is
no way to ensure security, but you do at least
have control over the official archive.

>> 4.  Would it be better to let individual users decide whether
>>     or not they want their messages archived?  If a patch
>>     were written to grant this capability, would it be used?
>
> People tend to quote other posters' posts fully, so I don't know that
> that would be all that successful. It would have to be well-written to
> strip all that sort of stuff out.

Hence not publicly archiving anything would
probably be better.  Still, consider partial public
archiving a third possibility.

>> 5.  Are there any other possible patches that might be
>>     used?
>
> There is a way, buried deep within the admin interface, to
> auto-discard messages matching a specific Regexp. I know nothing about
> regexps, but frequently wish I did, because it would help us cut down
> on a lot of the V14GR4-style spam. Which almost never reaches the
> mailing list but outnumbers genuine messages from real people in the
> moderation queue by a factor of about 20 or 25 to one.
>
> ~Mark Ryan

Specifically in Configuration Categories > Privacy
options > Spam filters.

Could you be specific?  For example, would you be
able to send me a large sample of the sort of spam
you want auto-discarded (not to this address) -
particularly the headers, I don't think Mailmain looks
at the message content itself - along with you present
Spam filtering policy (privately)?

You might have better luck running running the mail
through SpamAssassin *before* it hits Mailman.  You
would have to talk to the Wikimedia server
administrators about setting that up.  It's far better
than anything one could do with the Mailman regular
expression interface.