[Mailman-Users] Reducing false positives with spam markings with Gmail, etc.

[Steven Clift]

Thanks Stephen.

Are most mailman hosts finding their mail in Gmail heading to the
"Promotions" tab or "Forums" optional tab?

Steven Clift

On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 1:04 AM, Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org> wrote:
> Steven Clift writes:
>
>  > Has this been a growing issue with Mailman served lists?
>
> I wouldn't say it's growing.  For quite a while (a decade or so) we
> have been getting the occasional request for help in getting mail
> delivered to the major freemail services and portals, including Gmail,
> Yahoo!, Hotmail, and AOL.  I haven't noticed them getting more
> frequent over time, nor have I had problems delivering to them with my
> own lists (but I have a really easy set of users to service, most are
> admins or oldtimers themselves and tend to blame their freemail
> provider, not my lists).
>
>  > If it is not a growing problem with Mailman lists, then what are
>  > you doing right!?
>
> Hard to say.  For one thing, Mailman tries very hard to conform to the
> relevant RFCs (specifically 5322, 2369, and 2919).
>
> Second, most Mailman lists are set up by professionals, either people
> who are quite familiar with mail service including the kinds of things
> that keep you from getting labeled as spam, or hosting services.  Not
> all of them are completely competent, but most do a pretty good job.
> Most implement DKIM and/or SPF, for example.  So there may be a
> growing problem, and we just don't hear about it -- the host managers
> are dealing with it themselves.
>
> Third, we do have a pretty good FAQ on how to communicate with the big
> services to get on their good side.  It's tedious to follow their
> rules, but it does work most of the time.
>
>  > (One factor for us is that we do have a lot of users who post via
>  > the web interface, which Gmail doesn't seem to like.)
>
> That doesn't surprise me.  I assume that the from address is
> "Web.User at home.org" as they are registered with your service.  If your
> software is not emitting a correct Sender header, it will look like
> the From address is spoofed.  Gmail won't like that.  Make sure that
> in this case the Sender header is set appropriately.  (Mailman doesn't
> have a web interface, so doesn't have experience with this itself.
> The most common third-party interface is Gmane, which does get the
> headers right.  Not everybody appreciates Gmane -- they have a habit
> of mirroring lists whose owners don't want them mirrored -- but they
> do conform to the mail standards.)
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Steve