review and retire old lists

while removing the tor-teachers list (#40947 (closed)) i wondered how many active lists we actually did have left. so i took a look...

we have 65 lists:

root@eugeni:/var/lib/mailman# sudo -u list ./bin/list_lists | head -1
65 matching mailing lists found:

out of those, only 54 have archives, so those are the only ones we can guess at how active they are:

root@eugeni:/var/lib/mailman# ls -lt $(for list in $(ls lists) ; do  echo archives/private/$list.mbox/$list.mbox; done) 2>/dev/null | wc -l
54

out of that, only 35 lists have public archives:

root@eugeni:/var/lib/mailman# ls -lt $(for list in $(ls lists) ; do  echo archives/public/$list/index.html; done) 2>/dev/null | wc -l
35

and those are the lists that haven't been posted to since january 2022:

root@eugeni:/var/lib/mailman# ls -lt $(for list in $(ls lists) ; do  echo archives/public/$list/index.html; done) 2>/dev/null | sed '0,/2022 archives/d'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 www-data list   4518 Jan 19  2022 archives/public/tor-relays-fr/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list   9238 Oct 17  2021 archives/public/tor-relays-universities/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list  33055 Aug 14  2021 archives/public/tbb-bugs/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list  26537 May 28  2021 archives/public/ooni-dev/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list   4912 Feb 23  2021 archives/public/ooni-operators/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list   3654 Jan  6  2021 archives/public/tor-access/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list   1105 Nov  9  2020 archives/public/ooni-bugs/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list   6175 Jun  2  2020 archives/public/tor-scaling/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list   4095 Sep 24  2019 archives/public/tor-users/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list  37721 Sep 17  2018 archives/public/tor-wiki-changes/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list   2383 Sep  4  2018 archives/public/regional-nyc/index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root     list  17248 Aug 21  2015 archives/public/tor-censorship-events/index.html

... it's kind of an arbitrary metric... i wanted to look at "this year", but this was an easier sed pattern.

it's twelve lists. from there, it looksl ike the following lists are prime candidates for removal:

• tbb-bugs: @richard, is that still in use?
• ooni-dev: do the oon folks still use this?
• ooni-operators: same
• ooni-bugs: that one surely isn't relevant anymore
• tor-users: is that still a thing? no post since 2019!?
• tor-wiki-changes: i bet this is empty since we moved to gitlab
• regional-nyc: hey what's up NYC?
• tor-censorship-events: ooni does this now?

i'm not sure what to do about those:

• tor-relays-fr
• tor-relays-universities
• tor-access
• tor-scaling

added Doing Lists labels

assigned to @anarcat

i'm going to retire tor-wiki-changes already, that seems completely moot.

root@eugeni:/var/lib/mailman# ./bin/rmlist tor-wiki-changes
Not removing archives.  Reinvoke with -a to remove them.
Removing list info
root@eugeni:/var/lib/mailman#

marked the checklist item tor-wiki-changes: i bet this is empty since we moved to gitlab as completed

not sure who can help me sort through those old lists, maybe @arma or @gaba? @qbi are you there? :)

added Needs Information label and removed Doing label

tor-relay-fr was requested by french relay operators. We can check if it is still in use.

We were using tor-scaling before but it has been quite for some time. @mikeperry @isabela we do not need that list anymore, right?

I don't think we do. Please wait for @mikeperry's answer to make sure.

The tor-scaling list is not used anymore, but we should keep the archives.

Yeah, I don't destroy any of those archives anyways, i'm just trying to cleanup old lists, which implies removing the list configuration, which includes subscriber information, for example.

...

On 2022-11-01 19:20:52, Mike Perry wrote:

The tor-scaling list is not used anymore, but we should keep the archives.

-- Antoine Beaupré torproject.org system administration

done:

root@eugeni:~# sudo -u list /var/lib/mailman/bin/rmlist tor-scaling
Not removing archives.  Reinvoke with -a to remove them.
Removing list info
root@eugeni:~#

If I remember correctly tor-users was the attempt to migrate from tor-talk. There were lots of heated discussions back then and tor-users should be more moderated. (I might be wrong, that's what I remember). However that never gained track. So from my point of view this list can be deleted.

tor-relays-universities was/is a list were people from universities which want to run a relay from the university could discuss. I asked @arma some time ago, if we could delete it. Back them he wanted to keep it. Maybe he has changed his mind? ;-)

@anarcat the last post on tbb-bugs is from August 2021, I'm not particularly interested in maintaining/using this mailing list. I think people technically inclined enough to want to use a mailing list would know to find our issue tracker. So I say end it.

root@eugeni:~# sudo -u list /var/lib/mailman/bin/rmlist tbb-bugs
Not removing archives.  Reinvoke with -a to remove them.
Removing list info

done, thanks @richard.

marked the checklist item tbb-bugs: @richard, is that still in use? as completed

marked the checklist item tor-scaling as completed

@anarcat This issue has been waiting for information two weeks. It needs attention. Please take care of this before the end of 2022-11-30 or it will be moved to the Icebox.

added Stale label

i'm going to go ahead and move on from this ticket. i think we found the low-hanging fruit and the remaining ones are either non-responsive or somewhat controversial.

closed

marked this issue as related to #41025 (closed)

there was an explicit request to retire -fr, see #41025 (closed)

mentioned in issue #41025 (closed)

marked this issue as related to #41237 (closed)

mentioned in issue #41237 (closed)

tor-talk@ has been retired, see #41237 (closed)