Mailing list administrivia

[Bill Campbell]

Replying to the mailing list with mutt's 'L'.

On Wed, May 06, 2015, Brian K. White via Filepro-list wrote:
> On 5/3/2015 2:55 PM, Kenneth Brody via Filepro-list wrote:
>> On 4/23/2015 1:15 PM, Bill Campbell via Filepro-list wrote:
>>> I updated the Mailman mailing list manager this morning to deal
>>> with delivery problems with some sites (e.g. Yahoo!) that are
>>> picky about DMARC compliance.  The primary effect will be that
>>> the From: address will appear as the posting address for the
>>> list, not the original sender's From:.
>>>
>>> Any existing Reply-To: header should be untouched.  The original
>>> user's From: address should be put in a Reply-To: if I understand
>>> the Mailman documentation.
>>
>> (Catching up on old mail.  Not sure yet if this has changed.)
>>
>> My vote:  I don't like it.
>>
>> If for no other reason, when I see all the messages on the list, they
>> all show as being from "FilePro Mailing List" rather than the real
>> sender.  As long as you're munging "From:" would it be possible to at
>> least keep the name part unchanged?
>>
>> As in:
>>
>>      From: "Kenneth Brody" <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
>>
>> Not sure if that's any better, but at least it would show the sender's
>> name without having to read every message first.
>>

If you want to modify Mailman to do this, and get the maintainers
to incorporate it in their releases, more power to you.  I don't
have the time to do this unless I'm getting paid for my efforts.

JP posted a deliver script that will remunge the From: headers in
your inbox so they look like the original, and I'm sure somebody
could do a procmail hack to do the same thing.

The Mailman program worked nicely without any change from 1 Oct
2006 until August 2014 when about 40 subscriptions to the list
were automatically disabled because of multiple bounces when the
subscriber's provider started using DMARC to deny messages from
servers that weren't listed for the Sender's domain.  That
version tried to guess which email services were using DMARC, and
only munge the From: address to those servers.

Early last month we started getting a lot of complaints from
people on with comcast and other email hosting that they weren't
getting messages sent to mailing lists so I found that there was
an update to Mailman which I packaged and installed on our
servers.  This version's fix is an all-or-nothing approach per
list where it either leaves the original From: or munges it as
seen on the FilePro list now.  It does change the Reply-To:
header if necessary so the mail programs will reply to the
original sender easily (no I won't set it to Reply-To: the list.

	http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html

Mailman has always provided all the headers necessary to identify
a mailing list so that Mail User Agents (MUAs) such as mutt,
Thunderbird, etc. can implement a Reply-To-List capability.
These headers, List-Id:, List-Unsubscribe:, List-Archive,
List-Post:, and List-Subscribe: have been email Standards for
decades now, and any competent email program should be able to
look for the List-Post: header to Reply-To-List.

> THIS. Exactly.
>
> I am using an unknown little mail client called Thunderbird that  
> practically no one in the world uses.

And I just did a google search on a Reply-To-List function in
Thunderbird which came up with many articles lamenting the fact
that the authors of this little known program haven't fixed it
for years now.

> All messages show up as just being from filepro mail list.
> If the user doesn't put something in the body or signature, I got  
> nothing to go on.

The header actually reads 'From: "Brian K. White via Filepro-list"'.
When I view mail in the only GUI mail program I use much these
days, Apple's Mail.app, it displays as Brian K. White.  My mutt
character mailer only displays the To: and Subject: header
information in its index screen (e.g. it doesn't show the email
address in the <user at example.com> section of the From: header.

> Most messages have a reply-to that sometimes gives a clue, but sometimes  
> does not. For instance, who the heck is "jwccsllc at me.com"?

That's me when I posted something my Apple me.com account so I
could look at the what Mailman did with my original From: and
Reply-To: headers.

> Additionally, I used to be able to just click on the from column in the  
> inbox and sort by from, and gather all the messages from Foo together.  
> Now I guess I could do a more involved process using the search feature.
>
> I also don't like that the many are being penalized, to cater to the few  
> who are actually in the wrong.

> If being blacklisted is a problem, then make the CAUSE of the problem  
> suffer the burden of the problem THEY caused, not everyone else.

If you can reason with Yahoo!, AOL, Comcast, etc. you're a better
man than I.  I don't tilt at windmills, or waste my time trying
to change them.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax:            (206) 232-9186  Skype: jwccsllc (206) 855-5792

Manual, n.:
	A unit of documentation.  There are always three or more on a
	given item.  One is on the shelf; someone has the others.  The
	information you need is in the others.
		-- Ray Simard