Berklix.Org - Mail Lists Service - By Mailman

• Rejects & Silent Discards

  • All lists silently discard mail from all non members.
    • Join a list before writing
    • Avoids spam,
    • Avoids wasting list owners time,
    • Avoids delay waiting for a moderator,
    • Avoids list members only receiving what an unwanted moderator = censor might otherwise approve.
  • Lazy clueless requests posted to a whole list, asking someone to unsubscribe you - are silently discarded. Do It Yourself ! See Links in headers & footers.
  • If you write to a list & its not broadcast, it is Never because it was moderated or censored. Berklix lists have no moderators = censors. You either never had a right to write that list, or maybe you wrote with a From: header that does not match your list membership.

• List Types:

  • Many lists are announcement only, (only a subset are identified as LISTNAME-announce@) unless you are an organiser, do not write to them, your reply would be automatically discarded or rejected, unseen by any human except you.
  • Many lists have an adjacent organisers list LISTNAME-org@ you can write to, only if you are a member of LISTNAME@
  • A few lists have LISTNAME-chat@, unmoderated, writable by all members of LISTNAME-chat@. If the noise gets too much, unsubscribe the LISTNAME-chat@ & just stay on LISTNAME[-announce]@ list.
  • Technical discussion lists are open to all members. (generally just the non tech lists are restricted to announce only, because of the much higher percentage of incompetents, & clueless- to- lists people on some non tech. sports & social lists)

• Passwords

  • You don't need to remember passwords for each list: (You don't even need to remember a single passwords, though it helps if you do).
  • You can forget passwords if you want: You can go to a page under mailman. berklix. org/ mailman/ listinfo, type in your mail address Mailman uses to mail to you (see that in your headers), & click "Remind"
  • When you join a list (or were joined automatically by bulk import from the previous Majordomo equivalent list) Mailman automatically assigns you a different password for each list (unless you tell it otherwise).
  • You can change your password for any list to whatever you want, to replace the random one you were give.
  • To change password, for an example list called Test:
    Go to mailman . berklix . org / mailman / listinfo / test scroll down to end section "Test Subscribers" type your email address in box to left of "Unsubscribe or edit options" (Don't worry it wont unsubscribe you unless you tell it to later) go down the bottom of a page such as mailman. berklix. org/ mailman/ options/ test to "Change Your Password" where you can also click "Change globally."
• Lost Mail & Missed Postings
  • If you think you may have missed postings: Check the archives.
  • If you posted & you didn't get a copy: Check the archives; Also check your options for that list: Mailman specifically has an option NoMail (usually Off by default) to Not send you a list copy of what you send to list.
  • If a subscriber didn't receive your posting, tell him/her to check the archives. Once Subscriber has the list posting, he & his provider can analyse body of mail to see if his/her anti spam filter might have blocked it. They can also check a previous posting for clues on routing & false spam domain detection & rejection.
  • To test if you can send to lists Do Not Send To A Normal List; Instead join mailman. berklix. org/ mailman/ listinfo/ test
  • If you make postings to test@ Berklix & you can see them in Berklix test@ archive, then consider if maybe you or your provider are blocking Berklix, or possibly you asserted the NoMail attribute on your subscription.
    (NoMail is something no one normally turns on, except people who have multiple addresses registered with Robot (to allow sending from multiple addresses) while they have all but one marked "NoMail" to avoid receiving multiple copies from list).
  • If in doubt, Sender should also ask failing Subscriber to also join test@ so the two of you can run test transmissions without disturbing normal list memberships.
  • Please Do not ask list owner, as I think Mailman doesn't keep those logs (not had time to check yet).
  • Please Do not ask system administrator as Very Busy, & Sendmail logs have masses of spam rejects to wade through, only worth doing for serious domain to domain size problems, not for individual subscriptions please.

Permanent Conditions

• Limitations are also covered on Lists Page, the 2 pages need a text merge
• Smaller & technical lists are open to all members to post. No moderators, no censors.
• Larger non technical lists are announcements only by organisers, since lazy & incompetent people used to post change requests to lists, instead of to Robot.
• Anonymous names not allowed. We don't need trolls posting provocations as in forums.
• Any mail to Any list, with a From: address that is not an exact match for a member of that list, is Silently Automatically Discarded, unseen by Any human including you. Why:
  It's Self Defence. : The internet is now infested by spammers masquerading as others. Human list owners, mail list Robot owners & mail server owners here are not prepared to waste their unpaid free time to solve extra problems that arise from spammers, clueless & even a few malicious mailing where they should not.

  Yes some lists on some domains, people volunteer to be `moderators', but moderator can equal censor, so can be perceived to degrade list freedom. (Amazing that some moderators elsewhere like force list members to trust them: Least trust those who most want to be a moderator/ censor!). Result here of not allowing non members to post, is freedom from censorship for subscribed members

• If you are a member of a list, & your posts are not appearing on list, its your problem to examine your incoming list mail, examine your headers, & see who the list Robot send to, likely you have sent from a new address, & robot still has you listed at your old address.
• Fix your issues yourself, sorry, the list owners at Berklix have no time to help.
• Join test@ list to send yourself diagnostic tests. Do Not send test posts to live normal lists!

• Never post a graphical image of your business card to a mail list, if you must, at most include a web ref to your card (Example), or MIME attach your Vcard (Example).

  Though individuals can afford to receive & delete 40K mails, mail lists can not, as lists are archived & the archives bloat with un-necessary graphics included by senders by default.

  Example: In Jan. 2020 A post to bg-org@ failed as it was too big, so Mailman automatically blocked it from recipient list, delaying it by diverting to owner. The problem was the mail included an image/jpeg, a superfluous employer's large corporate business card, 29267 bytes, as graphical JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01, which with Ascii armour for MIME to enclose it + text (+ possibly header size) exceeded list post limit of 40K.

  Vcards enable recipients to mouse klick your contact info direct into their address books, without them staring at your bulky graphical image, searching which text should be typed into which field of their address book.
  

  Wikipedia articles on Vcard: English & German

• Enclosure Formats:
  Use publicly defined non proprietary formats. The mail lists uses computers & net connectivity supplied to promote BSD & other free public standard software. Do not use them to post or advertise inimicable proprietary formats promoted by monopolists, eg do Not post Microsoft .Doc etc)
• If you will be changing your email machine address, remove yourself from lists before your old address ceases to work. Then sign up with new address.
• If you change your name because you get married or similar, you can deal with that yourself on the server, just delete yourself, & re-join with new name.
• If you die, or similar, whoever inherits your email address can unsubscribe you from any lists easily, 'cos all the headers & footers point at Mailman & then one fills the box with your address at "To unsubscribe from ______, get a password reminder, or change your subscription options enter your subscription email address:" Then your executor will receive a new password to your address, to return to confirm to unsubscribe your address.

Temporary Restrictions Following import of all lists from Majordomo to Mailman.

• List.Info files from Majordomo are not yet merged into Mailman list pages, possibly might go in Mailman listinfo pages ?
• List.Intro files not yet imported from Majordomo ... & where to ? some are Long -possibly to be merged to locked per list web pages ?
• There is not yet automatic live service backup of functionality on a server cluster (like Berklix used to have with Majordomo).
  (Then list names may revert back from eg LIST@mailman.berklix to LIST@lists.berklix)
• There is data backup of lists & archives, automatically to spare server, + intermittently manually to secondary backup, off the internet.
• The archives do not contain old archives from Majordomo era lists. Maybe later, if it seems worth it.

Features

• Un-subscriptions now easy via web, not just via mail.
• Preferences setting via web, per user & list.
• English, Dutch French, German, Spanish, etc responses.
• Automatic timeouts & finally un-subscriptions save administrator time on repeated bounces
• A nasty killer loop if you don't patch it out.

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