bug#38358: Subject prefix, true recipient...

[Mark H Weaver]

Narcis Garcia via GNUzilla bug reports <address@hidden> wrote:

> El 25/11/19 a les 18:36, Mark H Weaver ha escrit:
>> * I clicked the popup menu of headers to filter on, and down at the
>>   bottom of the list I see "Customize...".  Choosing it summons the
>>   Customize Headers window.  I typed "List-id" in the text box and
>>   clicked "Add", and then "OK" to dismiss the Customize Headers window.
>>
>> * "List-id" is now an item within the popup menu of headers to filter
>>   on.
>>
>> Does this work for you?
>
> No, it doesn't.

Well, that might be a bug in Thunderbird, unless you made a mistake.
Did you include ":" in the custom header name?  It should _not_ be
included.

I'm sorry, but I'm reluctant to change every Subject header on this
mailing list in order to work around a bug in your mail program.  Among
other things, inserting "[bug-gnuzilla] " in addition to "bug#xxxxx: "
would leave very little space in the subject header to describe what's
being discussed.  I often find it difficult to fit the relevant
information within a subject header as it is.

> Even worse: replies like yours (not arriving me through list mailer
> because of CC recipient) are impossible to filter with any distinction
> about gnuzilla.

Well, that's entirely my fault.  The mailing list had rewritten your
>From header to be "Narcis Garcia via GNUzilla bug reports
<address@hidden>", and I manually replaced it with your actual
email address.  I won't do that again.

> List administrators did become crazy to attend DKIM requirements. If
> DMARC and SPF is used, DKIM doesn't enhance mail at all and list mailers
> can edit subjects and put footers.

It's been a while since I looked at this, and I've likely forgotten some
important details, but it seems to me that we had little choice in the
matter.

The fact is, some prominent GNU developers use DMARC and DKIM for their
personal domains, and some of them feel strongly about it.  Before the
recent changes to GNU mailing lists, when these developers would send
mail to a GNU mailing list, the changes made to their emails by mailman
would break the DKIM signatures, and many recipients subscribed to the
mailing list would reject the emails as spam.  This had the effect of
causing mail delivery to those recipients to be disabled, and moreover
harmed the reputation of GNU.org as a mail sender.  That's how I
remember it, anyway.

It would be one thing if DMARC or DKIM violated some important ethical
considerations that made them worth launching a campaign to fight
against, but as far as I can see they are reasonable approaches to
reduce spam, and in a way that doesn't require very sophisticated
heuristic filtering.  I think that's a good thing, because it makes it
much more practical to run an independent mail server.

What do you think?

    Regards,
      Mark