help-gnu-emacs
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Google Gmail mailing list bounces


From: Bob Proulx
Subject: Google Gmail mailing list bounces
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2019 12:40:41 -0700
User-agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13)

A PSA (Public Service Annoucement) for help-gnu-emacs.

We have had several subscribers ask about a recent problem with
Google's Gmail rejecting the mailing list.  Indeed about 30 Gmail
subscribers were bounced off the mailing list due to Google rejecting
mail from help-gnu-emacs.  Other addresses were okay.

This happens every so often.  Google will decide that mail from a
mailing list is spam and reject all messages at SMTP mail transfer
time.  Mailman receives those bounces and counts them up for each
recipient, not knowing anything about Google but only about bounces
per recipient.  If the bounces for a recipient exceeds the Mailman
bounce threshold then Mailman turns off delivery for that recipient.
Then later Mailman will send a notice to the recipient that mail
delivery has been turned off and that they can turn it on again if
they still want it.

Why does Google do this?  I don't know.  Google is a faceless
organization and they ignore complaints.  I have never been able to
get a response from them.  Fortunately Google seems to rate limit and
expire rather than block forever.  So waiting long enough seems to
reset the problem.

But in the specific case of mail from a mailing list there is a lot of
things that look like spam but are emacs lisp code sections and
config.log files and other output that may have similar characterists
to spam but are perfectly valid email messages on technical lists.
And then if users click "Junk" instead of unsubscribing that adds
positive feedback and tips things over the edge.

Also I think Gmail users in general are a big part of the problem.
Users subscribe to a mailing list and then later decide they do not
want to be subscribed and instead of unsubscribing start to report
mailing list mail as spam.  The automated machinery at Gmail then
learns the messages from the mailing list as spam and then starts to
reject messages from the mailing list as spam.  Users I have talked to
personally just can't be bothered to unsubscribe when the "Junk"
action is so handy and do not believe they are hurting anyone else
just by clicking a box on a web page.  They are astounded when I try
to convince them otherwise.

Also the entire gnu.org subnet moved from one ISP to another ISP a
month ago.  This means that any whitelists that were in place for the
previous subnet are no longer present for the new subnet.  This
reputation service problem was a worried-about problem for the move.
No one wanted to move.  But bandwidth is donated and there was no
option but to leave one donor and move to the new donor.

Because there were a number of reports from people I thought I would
make an announcement here about it and communicate what was happening.
If someone at Gmail has been bounced off the only thing that can be
done at the moment is to wait a bit and then follow the Mailman
instructions mailed to turn mailing list delivery back on again.

I don't know what we can do about it.  But regardless I always welcome
communication from mailing list users about problems.  If nothing else
we can all sympathize together. :-}

Bob



reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]