[Mailman-Users] MM lists on Gmane

[JC Dill]

Jim Popovitch wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-09-18 at 09:13 -0700, JC Dill wrote:
>> 1)  We have never received any such notice.  I was one of the MM 
>> list-owners the first and second times this came around.
>> 
>> 2)  Opt-out is wrong.  It might, possibly, be not too terribly
>> wrong if that were the only thing they did/do wrong, but
>> unfortunately it's just the nth instance of them doing something
>> wrong.
> 
> So.... why can't someone *help* gmane and Lars (who does seem like a 
> nice guy), to better understand what we think he should be doing.
> It sounds like people here have the advice they need, unfortunately
> it just seems to me that a few people are sitting back from the edge
> shooting arrows rather than trying to help bridge the impasse.

We tried.  He said "Oh, OK, I'll do that then" (e.g. make sure
Gmane has list owner permission before adding a list) but then it
doesn't get done.  From the Gmane FAQ:

> # I'm a list administrator, and I don't think you should archive my
> list. No problem. Just send a mail to Lars, and he'll remove the
> list.
> 
> # ...and the reason I want to remove the list is that I don't want
> unsubscribed people to be able to post to the list. Usenet sucks. 
> True, but the Gmane can make the group read-only, and that way Gmane
> won't try to be a bidirectional gateway for your list.
> 
> # Ok, but I still want to remove the list, because I don't want
> address harvesters to be able to grab email addresses. Have you
> considered whether the list could still be carried by Gmane, but with
> address encryption switched on?
> 
> # I just don't want to, ok? Quit harassing me, or I'll beat you to a
> pulp! Sure, no problem. It's your list.

Yet, the mailman-users list was added to Gmane a second time AFTER we 
had asked that it be removed and *not ever added back in again*. 
Clearly, he is not following his own policy.

If you want to hold Lars' hand until he gets it done right, be my guest! 
  I'm sure that his service could be really useful at some point, but 
IMHO it's not at that point YET.  He needs to fix the problems we 
brought up the first and second times mailman was added to Gmane.  The 
"address encryption" mentioned in the FAQ (quoted above) was not present 
the first time mailman was added.  If it had been present and Gmane 
hadn't been explicitly responsible for directly leaking email addresses 
to spammers we might have had a different outcome to Mailman-users being 
added to Gmane.  So, that problem was fixed (at some point, after it 
caused harm) but the subscription permission problem has NOT been fixed.

Gmane's subscription process is fraught with problems because it diverts 
responsibility from Gmane to ask permission onto the person submitting 
("Please do not subscribe lists that don't want to be carried by 
Gmane.") and onto the list owner (to "opt out").

	This is a broken process.

We don't allow individuals to be added to a mailing list this way!  Why 
should we allow a mailing list to be added to a public archive this way?

The correct process is for Gmane to ensure that Gmane HAS permission 
before adding a list.  The process for adding a list should include the 
list *owner* being contacted and asked to confirm that it is OK to add 
the list to Gmane's public archives *before* it is added.

jc