Create an operations email list

The operations team needs an email list to coordinate its work. (This will help with our grants@torproject.org email issues, as we'll be able to reduce the number of people using that alias once the operations list is established.)

Requirements

1. Does not require a moderation queue
2. Allows people who are not subscribed to the list to send email to the list without friction
3. Is not archived (for anyone, including members of the list)
4. Is not displayed on lists.torproject.org

Is that something a list can do?

If so, we request tor-operations@ to be created.

Note: It's possible that an operations list exits already, per this ticket from 8 years ago, but I don't think so based on my quick test. Just adding for due diligence since I noticed it: #15992 (closed)

changed due date to March 31, 2024

added Email label

marked this issue as related to #41396 (closed)

assigned to @lavamind

added Next label

added Lists label

@lavamind has this ticket but i'll just jump in here to clarify some things:

1. Does not require a moderation queue
2. Allows people who are not subscribed to the list to send email to the list without friction

those two are contradictory, unless you're willing to accept any spam or junk that can be fired at a mailing list, which is a lot. typically, we make mailing lists require moderation precisely because otherwise they are a spam trap that gets a lot of garbage.

3. Is not archived (for anyone, including members of the list)

that's fine.

4. Is not displayed on lists.torproject.org

that's fine too.

also, i will note that, as I mentioned in #41399 (closed), Google's new email deliverability requirements might make mailing lists (mailman in particular) more troublesome to reach Gmail, because Mailman (still) lacks support for "one-time unsubscribe links" (RFC8058), and is unlikely to get that fixed any time soon. Our other discussion solution (Discourse) doesn't suffer from that problem, but might have issues with the third requirement (archival), although it might be possible to purge old entries after a while. It will also have trouble with requirement 2 above, as you need to be in a private group to post to it.

Another option might be RT, which does allow anyone to post to it, and we have mechanisms there to purge old tickets (although they are archived at first).

1. Does not require a moderation queue
2. Allows people who are not subscribed to the list to send email to the list without friction

those two are contradictory, unless you're willing to accept any spam or junk that can be fired at a mailing list, which is a lot. typically, we make mailing lists require moderation precisely because otherwise they are a spam trap that gets a lot of garbage.

I think this concern applies more acutely for public mailing lists. For a mailing list like this with no archival and a limited members list, I don't think this is any worse than an email alias.

Our other discussion solution (Discourse) doesn't suffer from that problem, but might have issues with the third requirement (archival), although it might be possible to purge old entries after a while.

Discourse really considers purging topics and posts out of scope. You can "delete" them, but they're just marked as such in the database, not actually removed. I think you can do some Rails command-line magic to do it, and we might be able to automate it as a scheduled tasks, but, ew?

Another option might be RT, which does allow anyone to post to it, and we have mechanisms there to purge old tickets (although they are archived at first).

If Mailman really isn't an option either because of spam or unsubscribe links, I think RT is probably the best candidate, but it will need a medium setup effort to check off all the requirements, notable to configure the queue to forward all incoming messages to a list of recipients, and to regularly purge tickets.

maybe mailman is best then, with RT a close second. I'll note that RT also doesn't have RFC 8058 support. :)

added Needs Information label and removed Next label

This issue has been waiting for information two weeks or more. It needs attention. Please take care of this before the end of 2024-03-29. ~"Needs Information" tickets will be moved to the Icebox after that point.

(Any ticket left in Needs Review, Needs Information, Next, or Doing without activity for 14 days gets such notifications. Make a comment describing the current state of this ticket and remove the Stale label to fix this.)

To make the bot ignore this ticket, add the bot-ignore label.

added Stale label

@anarcat @lavamind what information is that you need here?

I think we could proceed here, I'm not sure why the ticket was moved to Needs Information

i think the problem was the contradiction between the first two requirements, as stated in #41539 (comment 2998998)

i thought this was resolved with @lavamind's comment

those two are contradictory, unless you're willing to accept any spam or junk that can be fired at a mailing list, which is a lot. typically, we make mailing lists require moderation precisely because otherwise they are a spam trap that gets a lot of garbage.

I think this concern applies more acutely for public mailing lists. For a mailing list like this with no archival and a limited members list, I don't think this is any worse than an email alias.

right, okay! if you're okay with mailman having possible issues with delivery to gmail, i guess we're go for this!

i think this is the best way to go for now, let's do it!

...

On 3/18/24 11:20 AM, anarcat (@anarcat) wrote:

GitLab

anarcat https://gitlab.torproject.org/anarcat commented on a discussion #41539 (comment 3009113):

right, okay! if you're okay with mailman having possible issues with delivery to gmail, i guess we're go for this!

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitLab #41539 (comment 3009113). You're receiving this email because of your account on gitlab.torproject.org https://gitlab.torproject.org. Unsubscribe https://gitlab.torproject.org/-/sent_notifications/REDACTED/unsubscribe from this thread · Manage all notifications https://gitlab.torproject.org/-/profile/notifications · Help https://gitlab.torproject.org/help

removed Stale label

added Next label and removed Needs Information label

added Doing label and removed Next label

Hey @smith the Mailman list is now created and configured according the the requirements outlined.

If you need a hand filling out the list's membership you can share the address list here (using an internal note preferably), otherwise, it should be good to go!

Thanks! I will send a note to all of the Operations people to get subscribed to this list

added Needs Review label and removed Doing label

mentioned in commit wiki-replica@411b9acf

added Doing label and removed Needs Review label

closed