Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> Bob Proulx wrote:
> > I haven't been so kind and generous.  There are so many mailing lists
> > that I filter out all of the mailman administrivia messages.  Eli has
> > gone above and beyond to take care of emacs-devel and others he is
> > maintaining.
> 
> I really don't see how we can leave this to the subscribers
> themselves: they just silently stop getting any messages from the
> list, and it's anybody's guess when will they notice.

If Mailman disables a subscriber due to bounces then later (due to a
nightly cron?) Mailman sends a notice to the recipient that their
subscription has been suspended saying it is due to excessive bounces
and includes instructions on enabling delivery again.  Therefore the
user should notice if they are reading the email.

Of course I know that I cycle in and out of reading email myself
because of other time commitments that take me away from the email.
So I might not notice for a while and then come back and find I had
been suspended for some time.  But for gnu.org lists at least there
are archives available to backfill missing messages if desired.

> IMO, it would be prudent if people who oversee GNU lists and
> configure mailman could do something to prevent this automatic
> blocking, because it makes no sense to me: why do we care so much
> about a bounced message?

Bounce messages are the only way to detect that subscribers fall off
the planetary network.  Because people move providers to abandon their
old address trying to escape spam.  Because people die.  Because
addresses as a natural course of order become undeliverable.  Forever.
If they were not removed from the list then the servers would become
clogged up trying to deliver dead letters forever.  Bounce handling is
the only way to clean up.

Sure some addresses are only temporarily undeliverable.  That's why
Mailman uses rate limits.  Normally if there is a bounce or two it
doesn't do anything other than bounce those individual messages.  It
is only when there are many that something must be wrong and delivery
is suspended.

And I don't have data to back this up but I think since Google is
looking at how recent it has rejected incoming messages too that if
delivery did not suspend that Google would not be given time to reset
either.  Therefore I think that Mailman's delivery suspension is
needed to back off to give Google time to not reject any more messages
and therefore reset its timers.

Unblocking manually by natural course happens after a delay.  We have
to sleep sometime.  Therefore doesn't fall into problems.  Or if it
does it just extends the cycle a cycle and then the natural delay
before unblocking is enough on the next round.  So all good.

> But if this wouldn't happen, I can't see how could I NOT unblock
> subscribers who fell victim to this atrocity.  It sounds the same
> part of my duties as reviewing messages held for moderation.

Well...  If Google were more responsive then I would be more
sympathetic.  But if they can ignore the problem then surely I can do
exactly the same thing on the problem they created.  I am sympathetic
to users caught in the trap.  I will try to help them.  If by nothing
more than communicating what I know about what is happening.  But
there is only so much time in the day.  And users are notified by
Mailman that delivery has been blocked and with instructions on
unblocking them.  They can self-service fix their own delivery
unblocking.  This spreads the work of the problem out among everyone.
Certainly not the best solution I agree.  But Google is making money
from selling users while the rest of us are volunteering time and
resources.  So it is not a level playing field.

Bob