Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Emacs!

Let's just shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org.  You think I'm joking?

I actually receive this mailing list via NNTP on gnu.emacs.bug, by the
way.  I've just been through this newsgroup clearing out spam, and it is
truly revolting.  Since 23rd November, when I last cleared out the group,
I have downloaded 38 decent posts and 302 spams.

In years past, I actually used gnu.emacs.bug a fair amount to report bugs
and submit feature requests.  If I were just getting into Emacs now, I
doubt I'd bother, given the state of this newsgroup.

gnu.emacs.bug is supposedly a moderated newsgroup.  That so much spam
spews forth from it makes the FSF look like a mass of incompetent idiots.

Sadly, gnu.emacs.help is rapidly going the same way.  By way of contrast,
the non-gnu newsgroup comp.emacs is clean indeed - Since 23rd November, I
haven't downloaded any spam at all there, though it does get the odd
slice of it.

In September, I sent an email to postmaster@gnu.org offering to do manual
moderation of help-gnu-emacs.  After all, sifting out ~20 spams per day
is not that onerous a task, and seeing how I'm doing it privately anyhow,
why not let everybody get the benefit?  I didn't get a reply.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Richard M. Stallman]

    gnu.emacs.bug is supposedly a moderated newsgroup.

Where does it say that?  This group is not moderated, and never was.

    In years past, I actually used gnu.emacs.bug a fair amount to report bugs
    and submit feature requests.  If I were just getting into Emacs now, I
    doubt I'd bother, given the state of this newsgroup.

I can see why you might hesitate to _read_ a list with a lot of spam,
but why, rationally, would the amount of spam affect your decision to
post to the list?  I don't see how it makes any difference.

The list still does its job.  I continue to receive this list, and
when a useful but report or suggestion comes along, I DTRT with it.
There is no reason for people to stop posting to it.

Reducing the spam would be useful.  One thing we could do to reduce
the spam is set things up to reject messages which fail to contain
"emacs" in the subject or body.  If these rejections send back an
auto-reply telling real users what to do, it should not be an
inconvenience.

    In September, I sent an email to postmaster@gnu.org

I don't think anyone reads mail to postmaster any more.
I was told, several years ago, that this was a general practice
on the net.

     offering to do manual
    moderation of help-gnu-emacs.

I did not know about your request.  I might want to take you up on it,
but first let's consider that automatic method.

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Andreas Schwab]

"Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     gnu.emacs.bug is supposedly a moderated newsgroup.
>
> Where does it say that?  This group is not moderated, and never was.

AFAIK the newsgroup (like other newsgroups in the gnu hierarchy) is only
marked as moderated because it is bidirectionally gated to the
bug-gnu-emacs mailing list.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 17:57:03 -0500
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> The list still does its job.  I continue to receive this list, and
> when a useful but report or suggestion comes along, I DTRT with it.
> There is no reason for people to stop posting to it.

Right.  Also, I suggest to switch to reading gnu.emacs.bug through the
mail reflector: it filters most of the spam.

>     In September, I sent an email to postmaster@gnu.org
> 
> I don't think anyone reads mail to postmaster any more.

The problem is, I cannot find _anyone_ who I can talk to when I have
problems with some Mailman-managed GNU mailing list.  (I am the admin
of a few of them, but bug-gnu-emacs is not one of them.)  Is there
someone out there who can help resolve such problems?

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Ralf Angeli]

* Eli Zaretskii (2005-12-12) writes:

> The problem is, I cannot find _anyone_ who I can talk to when I have
> problems with some Mailman-managed GNU mailing list.  (I am the admin
> of a few of them, but bug-gnu-emacs is not one of them.)  Is there
> someone out there who can help resolve such problems?

A few days ago I chatted with somebody about the mailing lists via
mailman at gnu.org.

-- 
Ralf

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Alan Mackenzie]

Morning, Richard!

On Sun, 11 Dec 2005, Richard M. Stallman wrote:

>    gnu.emacs.bug is supposedly a moderated newsgroup.

>Where does it say that?  This group is not moderated, and never was.

Hmmm.  It's certainly moderated at my ISP's server, and all posts I've
ever seen sport the header:

    Approved: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org     ; more recent

or

    Approved: bug-gnu-emacs-request@mail.gnu.org   ; more ancient

.  In fact, the changeover from the older to the newer form happened on
"Date: Sat, 7 Dec 2002 19:58:54 +0100", with "From: "Thilo A. Coblenzer"
<Thilo@Coblenzer.de>", "Subject: tex-dvi-view-command".  :-)

>    In years past, I actually used gnu.emacs.bug a fair amount to report
>    bugs and submit feature requests.  If I were just getting into Emacs
>    now, I doubt I'd bother, given the state of this newsgroup.

>I can see why you might hesitate to _read_ a list with a lot of spam,
>but why, rationally, would the amount of spam affect your decision to
>post to the list?  I don't see how it makes any difference.

It's more an emotional than a rational thing:  a repugnance at mixing in
with all the filth.  Also a feeling that nobody gives a damn about the
newsgroup, and it'd be a waste of time to post there.  (Yes, _I_ know
that Emacs developers take the list seriously, but a newbie might not.)
Submitting a bug report, especially ones _first_ bug report, is time
consuming and nerve wracking.

>The list still does its job.  I continue to receive this list, and
>when a useful but report or suggestion comes along, I DTRT with it.
>There is no reason for people to stop posting to it.

I still read it too, sort of.  But I find I'm only seeing proper posts
just after clearing out spam, which I do, perhaps every two to six weeks.

>Reducing the spam would be useful.  One thing we could do to reduce
>the spam is set things up to reject messages which fail to contain
>"emacs" in the subject or body.  If these rejections send back an
>auto-reply telling real users what to do, it should not be an
>inconvenience.

Probably the most effective simple measure would be to block everything
whose subject line starts with "?$B".

>    In September, I sent an email to postmaster@gnu.org

>I don't think anyone reads mail to postmaster any more.  I was told,
>several years ago, that this was a general practice on the net.

Ah!  :-(

>     offering to do manual moderation of help-gnu-emacs.

>I did not know about your request.  I might want to take you up on it,
>but first let's consider that automatic method.

OK:  Here is my suggestion again:

The sort of process I envisage would work something like this:
(i) Mail arriving at the list goes through the (presumably already
installed) automatic filter (Spamassassin?).
(ii) Of what's left, anything from a known serious poster passes through.
(iii) Anything which is a response to an existing article passes through.
(iv) The rest stays in limbo for up to 24 hours; during that time, a
moderator may accept it or reject it;
(v) After 24 hours (moderator on holiday?) articles will get passed
through to the list.

Given that I'm going through the motions anyway (on my own personal
archive), why not do the same on the mail server via SSH, so that
everybody gets the benefit?  Filtering ~20 spams per day, no matter how
repulsive, isn't _that_ onerous.  And with, say, 3 moderators, 8 time
zones apart on the world, the delay to serious posts would be barely
noticeable.

-- 
Alan.

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Sam Steingold]

> * Richard M. Stallman <ezf@tah.bet> [2005-12-11 17:57:03 -0500]:
>
>     In years past, I actually used gnu.emacs.bug a fair amount to
>     report bugs and submit feature requests.  If I were just getting
>     into Emacs now, I doubt I'd bother, given the state of this
>     newsgroup.
>
> I can see why you might hesitate to _read_ a list with a lot of spam,
> but why, rationally, would the amount of spam affect your decision to
> post to the list?  I don't see how it makes any difference.

A spam-only mailing list will not be read by a sensible person, as you
yourself concede, so why would a sensible person post to a list that is
not read by sensible people?

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://www.podval.org/~sds) running w2k
http://www.iris.org.il http://www.jihadwatch.org/ http://www.dhimmi.com/
http://pmw.org.il/ http://truepeace.org http://www.mideasttruth.com/
Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for a lifetime.

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Stefan Monnier]

> I can see why you might hesitate to _read_ a list with a lot of spam,
> but why, rationally, would the amount of spam affect your decision to
> post to the list?  I don't see how it makes any difference.

It makes no difference indeed in the case where you don't read the list *at
all* before posting.  But if you select the newsgroup just before posting an
article (the standard operation AFAIK: it's even usually recommended to
read a bit of a newsgroup before you post to it), or if you check the
archive before sending a mail to the mailing-list, then I'd be surprised if
the spam doesn't turn you off.  I mean: you really have to look for the
valid articles in order to realize that the group/list is actually
still alive.


        Stefan

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Ken Raeburn]

On Dec 12, 2005, at 04:10, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> Morning, Richard!
>
> On Sun, 11 Dec 2005, Richard M. Stallman wrote:
>
>>    gnu.emacs.bug is supposedly a moderated newsgroup.
>
>> Where does it say that?  This group is not moderated, and never was.
>
> Hmmm.  It's certainly moderated at my ISP's server, and all posts I've
> ever seen sport the header:

"Moderated" for a mailing list generally means someone is actually  
monitoring the content and choosing which messages to let through.   
"Moderated" for a newsgroup, I believe, just means that submissions  
are sent to an email address for "approval" rather than distributed  
from the server where the posting is done.  This can be used for  
"moderation" in the normal sense, or just some automated processing/ 
filtering with no human intervention.  I believe the latter is what's  
going on, thus the confusion.

>> Reducing the spam would be useful.  One thing we could do to reduce
>> the spam is set things up to reject messages which fail to contain
>> "emacs" in the subject or body.  If these rejections send back an
>> auto-reply telling real users what to do, it should not be an
>> inconvenience.
>
> Probably the most effective simple measure would be to block  
> everything
> whose subject line starts with "?$B".

Various other techniques are available too, especially if the gnu.org  
mail system can be tweaked -- greylisting, HELO-dotted-quad checks,  
delayed-greeting... depends on what risks you're willing to take for  
poorly-behaved or non-RFC-compliant senders, etc.  (I use a  
combination of the above on my home system, and get very little  
directly-delivered spam.  At work, we don't use them, but some simple  
tests suggest that the HELO-dotted-quad test would trap almost 40% of  
my spam.)

> The sort of process I envisage would work something like this:
> (i) Mail arriving at the list goes through the (presumably already
> installed) automatic filter (Spamassassin?).
> (ii) Of what's left, anything from a known serious poster passes  
> through.
> (iii) Anything which is a response to an existing article passes  
> through.
> (iv) The rest stays in limbo for up to 24 hours; during that time, a
> moderator may accept it or reject it;
> (v) After 24 hours (moderator on holiday?) articles will get passed
> through to the list.

That sounds sensible.  Though in my experience, the Mailman message  
moderation interface is nice for small amounts of work, but kind of  
clunky for dealing with large quantities of mail.  Enough so that I  
hacked up some elisp to parse the HTML pages, and I do most of my  
list moderation in emacs/ielm.  My hacks are still kind of clunky,  
but reduce the amount of wrist motion and per-message typing, when  
most of them are to be treated the same way.

Anyone want to hack up a real mailman-interaction mode, with summary  
listings and automatically-applied per-list filters and other fun  
stuff? :-)

Ken

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Ralf Angeli <angeli@iwi.uni-sb.de>
> Cc: acm@muc.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org, rms@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 09:55:13 +0100
> 
> A few days ago I chatted with somebody about the mailing lists via
> mailman at gnu.org.

Could you please tell me the email address of that person?

Thanks.

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Ralf Angeli]

* Eli Zaretskii (2005-12-12) writes:

>> From: Ralf Angeli <angeli@iwi.uni-sb.de>
>> Cc: acm@muc.de, emacs-devel@gnu.org, rms@gnu.org
>> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 09:55:13 +0100
>> 
>> A few days ago I chatted with somebody about the mailing lists via
>> mailman at gnu.org.
>
> Could you please tell me the email address of that person?

It seems my attempt to prevent address harvesting prevented even
humans to read the address. (c:  It is mailman@gnu.org.

-- 
Ralf

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Xavier Maillard]

   From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
   Cc: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>, emacs-devel@gnu.org

   > I can see why you might hesitate to _read_ a list with a lot of spam,
   > but why, rationally, would the amount of spam affect your decision to
   > post to the list?  I don't see how it makes any difference.

   It makes no difference indeed in the case where you don't read the list *at
   all* before posting.  But if you select the newsgroup just before posting an
   article (the standard operation AFAIK: it's even usually recommended to
   read a bit of a newsgroup before you post to it), or if you check the
   archive before sending a mail to the mailing-list, then I'd be surprised if
   the spam doesn't turn you off.  I mean: you really have to look for the
   valid articles in order to realize that the group/list is actually
   still alive.

You got the point. In fact I feel like the OP and no longer read this mailing list.
Maybe he is right when claiming we should have a moderation on that list since 
the list is practically unusable or useless in that state.

Like the OP, I am voluntering to do so if needed.

Xavier

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Xavier Maillard]

   >I did not know about your request.  I might want to take you up on it,
   >but first let's consider that automatic method.

   OK:  Here is my suggestion again:

   The sort of process I envisage would work something like this:
   (i) Mail arriving at the list goes through the (presumably already
   installed) automatic filter (Spamassassin?).
   (ii) Of what's left, anything from a known serious poster passes through.
   (iii) Anything which is a response to an existing article passes through.
   (iv) The rest stays in limbo for up to 24 hours; during that time, a
   moderator may accept it or reject it;
   (v) After 24 hours (moderator on holiday?) articles will get passed
   through to the list.

It looks good to me. Another thing we should act on is probably archives to
kick all these spams from history.

Xavier

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Reiner Steib]

On Mon, Dec 12 2005, Ken Raeburn wrote:

> Anyone want to hack up a real mailman-interaction mode, with summary
> listings and automatically-applied per-list filters and other fun
> stuff? :-)

Maybe `gnus-mdrtn.el' could be useful:

,----[ (info "(gnus)Moderation") ]
| If you are a moderator, you can use the `gnus-mdrtn.el' package.  It is
| not included in the standard Gnus package.  Write a mail to
| `larsi@gnus.org' and state what group you moderate, and you'll get a
| copy.
`----

Lars also has written some Gnus extension for the moderation of spam
reports on gmane.org.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Reiner Steib]

On Mon, Dec 12 2005, Stefan Monnier wrote:

> It makes no difference indeed in the case where you don't read the list *at
> all* before posting.  But if you select the newsgroup just before posting an
> article (the standard operation AFAIK: it's even usually recommended to
> read a bit of a newsgroup before you post to it), or if you check the
> archive before sending a mail to the mailing-list, then I'd be surprised if
> the spam doesn't turn you off.  I mean: you really have to look for the
> valid articles in order to realize that the group/list is actually
> still alive.

Agreed.

I read bug-gnu-emacs via gmane.org (gmane.emacs.bugs).  After applying
Gmane's spam detection (detected spam is cross-posted to
gmane.spam.detected) and some home grown leafnode filters, the spam
ratio is approximately 50%.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Richard M. Stallman]

    The problem is, I cannot find _anyone_ who I can talk to when I have
    problems with some Mailman-managed GNU mailing list.

I would suggest raising the issue on the list itself.
The list admins will see your mail.

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Bill Wohler]

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> writes:

> I read bug-gnu-emacs via gmane.org (gmane.emacs.bugs).

Me too.

>                                                         After applying
> Gmane's spam detection (detected spam is cross-posted to
> gmane.spam.detected) 

Thank you thank you thank you! I did not know that. I added the
following to all.SCORE (in Gnus) and it has made all the difference!

  ("xref"
    ;; Gmane helps remove spam.
    ("gmane.spam.detected" -1000 nil s))

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD
Maintainer of comp.mail.mh FAQ and MH-E. Vote Libertarian!
If you're passed on the right, you're in the wrong lane.

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Ken Raeburn]

On Dec 12, 2005, at 04:10, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> The sort of process I envisage would work something like this:
> (i) Mail arriving at the list goes through the (presumably already
> installed) automatic filter (Spamassassin?).
> (ii) Of what's left, anything from a known serious poster passes  
> through.
> (iii) Anything which is a response to an existing article passes  
> through.
> (iv) The rest stays in limbo for up to 24 hours; during that time, a
> moderator may accept it or reject it;
> (v) After 24 hours (moderator on holiday?) articles will get passed
> through to the list.

Is it common these days to forge approval lines in moderated groups?   
Perhaps spam articles should be actively cancelled on the nntp side,  
or posted to the nocem group, or whatever it is that's usually done  
these days, in addition to simply not letting them through the mail  
filter....

Ken

Re: Let's shut down bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hi, Ken.

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Ken Raeburn wrote:

>On Dec 12, 2005, at 04:10, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>> The sort of process I envisage would work something like this:
>> (i) Mail arriving at the list goes through the (presumably already
>> installed) automatic filter (Spamassassin?).
>> (ii) Of what's left, anything from a known serious poster passes  
>> through.
>> (iii) Anything which is a response to an existing article passes  
>> through.
>> (iv) The rest stays in limbo for up to 24 hours; during that time, a
>> moderator may accept it or reject it;
>> (v) After 24 hours (moderator on holiday?) articles will get passed
>> through to the list.

>Is it common these days to forge approval lines in moderated groups?   
>Perhaps spam articles should be actively cancelled on the nntp side,  
>or posted to the nocem group, or whatever it is that's usually done  
>these days, in addition to simply not letting them through the mail  
>filter....

I think the spam (on bug-gun-emacs and help-gnu-emacs) is being injected
into the system mainly through the mailing list, with only little bit, if
any at all, through NNTP - The Message-Ids which don't begin with
"<mailman...." don't seem to be attached to spam at all.

>Ken

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)