Re: Google Gmail mailing list bounces

[Scott Randby <srandby@gmail.com>]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I've been removed from this list twice in the last week, but I haven't been removed from either Emacs-Devel or Emacs-Orgmode since I started subscribing to those lists years ago. Maybe I will never know why.

Scott Randby

On 2/18/19 2:40 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
> 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
> 
>