From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bob Proulx Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Google Gmail mailing list bounces Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2019 12:40:41 -0700 Message-ID: <20190218122758037230128@bob.proulx.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="196869"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Feb 18 20:41:21 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1gvon1-000p5U-Kk for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 18 Feb 2019 20:41:19 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:35791 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gvon0-00030v-J7 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 18 Feb 2019 14:41:18 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:60274) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gvomj-00030V-6f for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Feb 2019 14:41:02 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gvomh-000166-CQ for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Feb 2019 14:41:00 -0500 Original-Received: from havoc.proulx.com ([96.88.95.61]:58634) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gvomg-0000le-1S for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Mon, 18 Feb 2019 14:40:59 -0500 Original-Received: from joseki.proulx.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by havoc.proulx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 02D4F1D4 for ; Mon, 18 Feb 2019 12:40:42 -0700 (MST) Original-Received: from hysteria.proulx.com (hysteria.proulx.com [192.168.230.119]) by joseki.proulx.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C2C9E217DF for ; Mon, 18 Feb 2019 12:40:41 -0700 (MST) Original-Received: by hysteria.proulx.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id B86602DC7E; Mon, 18 Feb 2019 12:40:41 -0700 (MST) Mail-Followup-To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Content-Disposition: inline X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 96.88.95.61 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "help-gnu-emacs" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:119446 Archived-At: A PSA (Public Service Annoucement) for help-gnu-emacs. We have had several subscribers ask about a recent problem with Google's Gmail rejecting the mailing list. Indeed about 30 Gmail subscribers were bounced off the mailing list due to Google rejecting mail from help-gnu-emacs. Other addresses were okay. This happens every so often. Google will decide that mail from a mailing list is spam and reject all messages at SMTP mail transfer time. Mailman receives those bounces and counts them up for each recipient, not knowing anything about Google but only about bounces per recipient. If the bounces for a recipient exceeds the Mailman bounce threshold then Mailman turns off delivery for that recipient. Then later Mailman will send a notice to the recipient that mail delivery has been turned off and that they can turn it on again if they still want it. Why does Google do this? I don't know. Google is a faceless organization and they ignore complaints. I have never been able to get a response from them. Fortunately Google seems to rate limit and expire rather than block forever. So waiting long enough seems to reset the problem. But in the specific case of mail from a mailing list there is a lot of things that look like spam but are emacs lisp code sections and config.log files and other output that may have similar characterists to spam but are perfectly valid email messages on technical lists. And then if users click "Junk" instead of unsubscribing that adds positive feedback and tips things over the edge. Also I think Gmail users in general are a big part of the problem. Users subscribe to a mailing list and then later decide they do not want to be subscribed and instead of unsubscribing start to report mailing list mail as spam. The automated machinery at Gmail then learns the messages from the mailing list as spam and then starts to reject messages from the mailing list as spam. Users I have talked to personally just can't be bothered to unsubscribe when the "Junk" action is so handy and do not believe they are hurting anyone else just by clicking a box on a web page. They are astounded when I try to convince them otherwise. Also the entire gnu.org subnet moved from one ISP to another ISP a month ago. This means that any whitelists that were in place for the previous subnet are no longer present for the new subnet. This reputation service problem was a worried-about problem for the move. No one wanted to move. But bandwidth is donated and there was no option but to leave one donor and move to the new donor. Because there were a number of reports from people I thought I would make an announcement here about it and communicate what was happening. If someone at Gmail has been bounced off the only thing that can be done at the moment is to wait a bit and then follow the Mailman instructions mailed to turn mailing list delivery back on again. I don't know what we can do about it. But regardless I always welcome communication from mailing list users about problems. If nothing else we can all sympathize together. :-} Bob