Re: Distribution delays on mailing lists for GNU LilyPond

[Jean Abou Samra]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.


Le 17/06/2022 à 04:54, Ian Kelling a écrit :
> Jean Abou Samra <jean@abou-samra.fr> writes:
>
> > Hello, dear administrators of GNU list servers,
> >
> > Sorry for the possible double post, I was not sure which address to
> > send this to. This is to let you know that mailing lists related
> > to the GNU LilyPond project have recently been experiencing abnormal
> > distribution delays. Even though this has been a problem in the
> > past, it seems to be exacerbated somewhat. On lilypond-user and
> > lilypond-user-fr at least, it is not infrequent for me to receive
> > message two or three hours later. Some have reported routinely
> > receiving emails one or two days after the fact, cf.
> > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2022-05/msg00399.html
> > This is a nail in the project's feet, as people are doing duplicated
> > work to answer support questions, and are less encouraged to
> > step in discussions that are exhausted hours before they get
> > into their inboxes.
> >
> > Is this expected? Could something be done about it?
> >
> > Thank you for your assistance.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Jean Abou Samra (developer on GNU LilyPond)
> Hi, I work at FSF and am the main person there who works on the mailing
> lists.
>
> There are some common causes of delays.
>
> #1, most common: When someone posts to the list from an address that has
> never posted before, the message gets held until a moderator approves it
> to ensure it isn't spam. Once approved, their future posts are not held
> for moderation. The moderators are usually just the listhelper team,
> which is about 2 people who do this a few times a day. That is described
> here: http://listhelper.nongnu.org/. That can be done much more often if
> there are people who do moderation. All that needs to happen is that the
> list administrator/owner gives out the moderation password to people,
> and optionally add their address to the list moderator field so they get
> notified when a message is held for moderation. lilypond-devel has their
> list owner/admin listed as drl@gnu.org. So, I would ask them about that.



For us, it is also happening with posts from active people who
are definitely subscribed to the lists. (I'm also one of the
admins on lilypond-user-fr, so I see what posts are moderated
there, and delays are happening for posts that didn't need
moderation.)



> #2, sometimes mailman gets hung up and delays sending out messages. We
> don't really know why, but we know that in order to debug the issue, we
> need to first move to mailman 3. Mailman 2 is no longer supported
> upstream. There is a good chance the issue will just go away when we
> move. Mailman 3 also has some nice features like allowing people to post
> directly from a web archive interface (the current archive interface
> will continue to exist in mailman 3, there will be 2 or more archive
> interfaces). We want to have a few lists try out mailman 3 to detect any
> issues before we move all the lists. Initially, the listhelpers won't be
> able to help remove spam, they will need a few months to port over their
> automation to mailman 3. There could be other bumps, but we will work
> hard to address them and if needed, move lists back to mailman 2 while
> we do. Does lilypond want one or more of their lists to be one of the
> initial group to move to mailman 3?



Yes, I'd be in favor of doing that. Others, what do you
think?

Regarding listhelper, I didn't know about it. I'm not sure
if it's enabled on lilypond-user or lilypond-devel, but judging
from
https://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/ListHelperAntiSpam/,
it is not enabled on lilypond-user-fr (there's no non-human address
in the list of moderators that I see in the administrative
interface).

Does this need approval from the list admins? We'd then
have to contact the person behind drl@gnu.org (I don't
even know who they are). They are apparently the admin
for lilypond-user and lilypond-devel. For lilypond-user-fr,
I am an admin, so I can give my approval. (Valentin,
in CC, is the other admin.)

I'm actually pretty eager to have a web interface allowing
to post, even if it justs opens a mailto link as far as
I can judge from https://mail.python.org/archives/.
Back in the days, lilypond-user-fr had a Nabble interface.
When Nabble was discontinued, many people said they
preferred that and some weren't even understanding
how to use the list by email.

HyperKitty archives are also much more usable than the
current ones because they don't split threads by month.
It has happened to me to miss that a thread had continued
because it crossed month boundaries.


> #3, least common: sometimes there is an issue with a specific mail
> server which causes delays. This can often be fixed. I'm happy to check
> if that is the case, just email the details of the message to
> mailman@gnu.org. If it hasn't been posted, wait at least 3 hours from
> when you sent it. Please include the message-id header, from, to,
> subject, and as close to possible the exact time it was sent including
> a timezone.


I don't know how to know if this the cause rather than #2.
The thread linked in my original message has an example
thread where delays were experienced by Lukas, would you
like me to forward the source code of those messages to
you?

Thanks,
Jean