Re: Distribution delays on mailing lists for GNU LilyPond

[Ian Kelling]

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.

#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?

#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.

-- 
Ian Kelling | Senior Systems Administrator, Free Software Foundation
GPG Key: B125 F60B 7B28 7FF6 A2B7  DF8F 170A F0E2 9542 95DF
https://fsf.org | https://gnu.org