fixing/disabling the bug news->mail gateway

fixing/disabling the bug news->mail gateway

[Glenn Morris]

It's a long-standing issue that the news->mail gateway does not work
with the bug tracker:

http://debbugs.gnu.org/936

When someone posts a message to the gnu.emacs.bug newsgroup, it
appears on the bug-gnu-emacs mailing list, but not in the bug tracker.
For example, Ted Zlatanov's response to bug 5307 today. (Actually, he's
the only person I ever notice using the news gateway to post.)

The only idea I had to fix this was that the news->mail gateway should
inject messages into submit@debbugs.gnu.org rather than directly to
the bug-gnu-emacs list. (Debbugs would then automatically take care of
appending the data to an exiting report or creating a new bug
depending on whether the subject line contained an existing bug
number.)

Does anyone knw if this is doable? It doesn't seem to be possible in a
standard mailman setup, but could the FSF admins somehow add it as a
special case?

Otherwise I reiterate my proposal from

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-11/msg01209.html

    I think it would be acceptable to make the gateway one-way,
    mail->news only. I don't think people need to be able to report
    bugs via usenet. For those who want to do so, gmane exists.

Re: bug#936: fixing/disabling the bug news->mail gateway

[Chong Yidong]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

> Does anyone knw if this is doable? It doesn't seem to be possible in a
> standard mailman setup, but could the FSF admins somehow add it as a
> special case?
>
> Otherwise I reiterate my proposal from
>
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-11/msg01209.html
>
>     I think it would be acceptable to make the gateway one-way,
>     mail->news only. I don't think people need to be able to report
>     bugs via usenet. For those who want to do so, gmane exists.

Let's just make it one-way.  Maintaining two-way gateways is fine if
there's negligible hassle (e.g. help-gnu-emacs), but in this case it's
too much trouble.

How do we go about making it one-way, tho?

Re: bug#936: fixing/disabling the bug news->mail gateway

[Glenn Morris]

Chong Yidong wrote:

> Let's just make it one-way.  Maintaining two-way gateways is fine if
> there's negligible hassle (e.g. help-gnu-emacs), but in this case it's
> too much trouble.
>
> How do we go about making it one-way, tho?

I think the main thing is to advertise that it's become one way.

From looking at debbugs-submit, I think actually doing it might just
be a case of unsetting the Mailman option gateway_to_mail in the
bug-gnu-emacs setup.

Re: bug#936: fixing/disabling the bug news->mail gateway

[Richard Stallman]

    >     I think it would be acceptable to make the gateway one-way,
    >     mail->news only. I don't think people need to be able to report
    >     bugs via usenet. For those who want to do so, gmane exists.

    Let's just make it one-way.  Maintaining two-way gateways is fine if
    there's negligible hassle (e.g. help-gnu-emacs), but in this case it's
    too much trouble.

I agree there is no _need_ for people to be able to post bug reports
as news.  But what would be the practical result of a "one-way gateway"
when someone tries to post a bug report as news?

Would it mean that his bug report appears as news, and all seems well,
but it is never seen on the mailing list?  That is not a very good
outcome.

If the gateway could send him mail to inform him that he has to post
via mail, not via news, that would be much better.

Re: bug#936: fixing/disabling the bug news->mail gateway

[Jason Rumney]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I agree there is no _need_ for people to be able to post bug reports
> as news.  But what would be the practical result of a "one-way gateway"
> when someone tries to post a bug report as news?

I'm not sure what the difficulty is in making gnu.emacs.bug a moderated
group with the bug tracker address as moderator, and output from the bug
tracker considered as the moderated content.

Re: bug#936: fixing/disabling the bug news->mail gateway

[Richard Stallman]

    I'm not sure what the difficulty is in making gnu.emacs.bug a moderated
    group with the bug tracker address as moderator, and output from the bug
    tracker considered as the moderated content.

Maybe that is a good idea.

I don't know enough to judge.  However, ISTR that it is impossible to
convert a moderated group into a nonmoderated group.  If that is true,
we should make damned sure this will work well, before trying it.

Re: bug#936: fixing/disabling the bug news->mail gateway

[Glenn Morris]

What I conclude from this is that while we have various ideas for
changing this, we don't know which, if any, will work or how to
implement them. So I think we will have to present sysadmin@gnu with
the list of ideas and ask them if they can see how to implement one of
them.

Otherwise the least bad option is probably to leave it as it is.