Mailing list mirror powered by Discourse

ruby-talk
21

The reason for this is because whoever configured the mail setup for
discourse.org configured it to give mailinglists big trouble. It has a
DMARC policy of p=reject:

    $ dig _dmarc.discourse.org TXT
    [...snip...]
    ;; ANSWER SECTION:
    _dmarc.discourse.org. 300 IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=reject;
    rua=mailto:dmarc-reports@discourse.org; ruf=mailto:dmarc@discourse.org"

Note the "p=reject". This causes heavy trouble for mailinglists. For
further information, see:

* Yahoo's New DMARC Policy Destroys Every Mailing List across the World
* DEV/DMARC - Mailman Wiki
* DMARC - Wikipedia

You'll mostly see references to Yahoo if you search for this problem,
but it's the same problem here. Yahoo also sets a p=reject DMARC policy.

If the Discourse people want to participate here, they should change
their DMARC record.

Greetings
Marvin

···

Am 22. November 2017 um 08:14 Uhr +0100 schrieb Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com>:

> I wonder if there is trouble with the current Mailman dropping emails for
> some people -- I never got Gerhard's original message, although I see it at
> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/438466 .

Same for me. And I checked spam folder.

--
Blog: https://www.guelkerdev.de
PGP/GPG ID: F1D8799FBCC8BC4F

1 Like
22

Thanks for getting to the bottom of this! I wasn't aware that a DMARC reject policy causes problems, but it makes sense.

Anyway, I'll use my private email address for now.

···

On 2017-11-22 10:18, Marvin Gülker wrote:

Am 22. November 2017 um 08:14 Uhr +0100 schrieb Robert Klemme <shortcutter@googlemail.com>:

I wonder if there is trouble with the current Mailman dropping emails for
some people -- I never got Gerhard's original message, although I see it at
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/438466 .

Same for me. And I checked spam folder.

The reason for this is because whoever configured the mail setup for
discourse.org configured it to give mailinglists big trouble. It has a
DMARC policy of p=reject:

1 Like
23

Thanks for all the feedback so far. First, I'd like to set everyone's mind at ease by clarifying a few things.

We do not want to replace the mailing list with Discourse – it should coexist with the mailing list.

However, we'd love to use Discourse as a replacement for the Ruby Forum [1] which has been read-only since May 2017. Maybe it could act as an official web archive, but that's not for us to decide.

We are aware that Discourse still has some problems with rendering plaintext emails, and to a lesser degree with HTML emails. We want to make this *a lot better*, since handling incoming emails is one of Discourse's core features.

So, here's the plan I'm proposing:

1) At first Discourse acts as a read-only mirror. Only for searching and reading. No outgoing email. That's where we are right now.

2) Fix rendering issues (see below).

3) Maybe, as a next step, we could allow people to sign-up to use some of the features of Discourse like tracking or watching topics without subscribing to the mailing list. It would still not be sending anything to the mailing list!

4) After that, we /could/ create a two-way bridge between Discourse and the mailing list. *But*, before this can happen, Discourse needs to learn to send plaintext and HTML emails that contain only the bare minimum. In short, it should respect the etiquette of mailing lists.

2. Content accuracy and consistency is *critical* for a *technical*
     mailing list. The email gated from a Discourse forum:
     - drops information
     - interprets code examples as markup
     - allows forum users to edit posts without triggering another email

Any one of the items under #2 would be a show-stopper for me...

I'm not sure what you mean by "drops information", but I agree with the other points. That's why I made sure that Discourse doesn't interpret code examples as markup. I'd consider it a bug if you find any posts on [2] where this is still the case. Feel free to bring them to my attention.

The same goes for other formatting issues. Fixing the problem with nested quotes is at the top of my list and I invite everyone to report other rendering problems that you think need to be fixed.

Also, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the plan I outlined above.

[1] https://www.ruby-forum.com/
[2] https://ruby-talk.trydiscourse.com/

···

On 2017-11-21 17:49, Hassan Schroeder wrote:

24

Compare:

767×346 26.4 KB

1160×410 34.4 KB

(Tried to attach these, but went to moderation; apologies if that
message shows up later!)

···

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 10:01 AM, Gerhard Schlager <mail@gerhard-schlager.at> wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean by "drops information"

--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
twitter: @hassan
Consulting Availability : Silicon Valley or remote

25

Hello everyone,
Why not use Telegram ?

···

2017-11-22 21:53 GMT+00:00 Hassan Schroeder <hassan.schroeder@gmail.com>:

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 10:01 AM, Gerhard Schlager > <mail@gerhard-schlager.at> wrote:

> I'm not sure what you mean by "drops information"

Compare:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/webtuitive-public/forum-view.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/webtuitive-public/gmail-view.png

(Tried to attach these, but went to moderation; apologies if that
message shows up later!)
--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
twitter: @hassan
Consulting Availability : Silicon Valley or remote

Unsubscribe: <mailto:ruby-talk-request@ruby-lang.org?subject=unsubscribe>
<http://lists.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/ruby-talk&gt;

26

chaymae,

Hello everyone,
Why not use Telegram ?

I find Telegram useless - messages just stream by - at least with emails and Discourse, it is convenient to browse over Subjects from earlier emails quite nicely . .

Phile.

···

On 2017-11-23 08:43, BAZZAOUI chaymae wrote:

2017-11-22 21:53 GMT+00:00 Hassan Schroeder
<hassan.schroeder@gmail.com>:

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 10:01 AM, Gerhard Schlager >> <mail@gerhard-schlager.at> wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean by "drops information"

Compare:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/webtuitive-public/forum-view.png [1]
https://s3.amazonaws.com/webtuitive-public/gmail-view.png [2]

(Tried to attach these, but went to moderation; apologies if that
message shows up later!)
--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
twitter: @hassan
Consulting Availability : Silicon Valley or remote

Unsubscribe:
<mailto:ruby-talk-request@ruby-lang.org?subject=unsubscribe>
<http://lists.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/ruby-talk [3]>

Links:
------
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/webtuitive-public/forum-view.png
[2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/webtuitive-public/gmail-view.png
[3] http://lists.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/ruby-talk

Unsubscribe: <mailto:ruby-talk-request@ruby-lang.org?subject=unsubscribe>
<http://lists.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/ruby-talk&gt;

--
Philip Rhoades

PO Box 896
Cowra NSW 2794
Australia
E-mail: phil@pricom.com.au

27

Elixir forums are running an unsupported version of Discourse
"Discourse 1.8.0.beta13 - GitHub - discourse/discourse: A platform for community discussion. Free, open, simple.
version 076f079d17bf69b157d38445d769f13946755d9f"

I just tested locally and I am unable to reproduce the issue, this is
fixed in the latest beta.

Regardless, we are talking about a completely different formatting
engine which we use for the mirror. We are not treating content on the
mailing list as "Markdown" we are treating it as text and formatting
it accordingly.

Content that is sent to the list from the web IF we enable a
bi-directional mirror, would follow very different rules for "mailing
list friendly" formatting. It would look like posts sent from your
email client, we would not include all the adornments like user
avatar, click to unsubscribe, visit topic on web and so on for
messages sent to mailman.

The most important part here is that we want to work with the list
members to make this great.

···

On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 8:53 AM, Hassan Schroeder <hassan.schroeder@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 10:01 AM, Gerhard Schlager > <mail@gerhard-schlager.at> wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean by "drops information"

Compare:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/webtuitive-public/forum-view.png
https://s3.amazonaws.com/webtuitive-public/gmail-view.png

(Tried to attach these, but went to moderation; apologies if that
message shows up later!)
--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
twitter: @hassan
Consulting Availability : Silicon Valley or remote

Unsubscribe: <mailto:ruby-talk-request@ruby-lang.org?subject=unsubscribe>
<http://lists.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/mailman/options/ruby-talk&gt;

28

Hello Gerhard!!!

In Article <CAGJRAhgmM3e1oNu+0EHKCw6+NjF1S-1xcWw-p_C7Sfsye7M2UQ@mail.gmail.com>,
Gerhard Schlager <gerhard.schlager@discourse.org> writes:

Hi,

I work at Discourse and would like to announce our mirror of the Ruby-Talk
mailing list.

https://ruby-talk.trydiscourse.com
[...]
Check it out and feel free to tell us what you think about it. We'd
appreciate your feedback.

Just i checked that with Firefox under Ubuntu.
Actually that seems Gmail. Not bad.

Sincerely, Byung-Hee.

···

--
^고맙습니다 _救濟蒼生_ 감사합니다_^))//

29

Hello,

I wanted to let you know that plain text emails now look a lot better on Discourse.

* The problems with nested quotes are fixed.
* Emails sent with format=flowed are wrapped correctly.
* The line breaks in all other plain text emails stay untouched.
* Code snippets within three backticks (Markdown) are detected and shown as code blocks.

Also, I enabled sign-ups on our Ruby-Talk mirror [1]. Give it a try!
I'd appreciate your feedback. It's still in read-only mode, so you don't have to worry about Discourse sending any emails to the mailing list.

And in case you want to know how to setup a mailing list mirror with Discourse, take a look at my how-to [2].

While configuring my mailing list membership, I noticed that the mailman page at [3] is still pointing to the outdated Ruby-Forum. I wonder if it would make sense to link to the up-to-date Discourse mirror instead? Maybe even add it as an additional archive on the Ruby website [4]?

Gerhard

[1] https://ruby-talk.trydiscourse.com/
[2] https://meta.discourse.org/t/77990
[3] https://lists.ruby-lang.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ruby-talk
[4] https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/community/mailing-lists/

2 Likes
30

Might be a good idea. Please file that as an issue on the website's
tracker: <https://github.com/ruby/www.ruby-lang.org/issues&gt;

Marvin

···

Am 14. Januar 2018 um 21:15 Uhr +0100 schrieb Gerhard Schlager:

While configuring my mailing list membership, I noticed that the mailman
page at [3] is still pointing to the outdated Ruby-Forum. I wonder if it
would make sense to link to the up-to-date Discourse mirror instead? Maybe
even add it as an additional archive on the Ruby website [4]?

--
Blog: https://mg.guelker.eu
PGP/GPG ID: F1D8799FBCC8BC4F

1 Like
31

I've just signed up and it looks great!

Thanks for all the effort on making this happen.

Abinoam Jr.

···

2018-01-14 17:15 GMT-03:00 Gerhard Schlager <mail@gerhard-schlager.at>:

Also, I enabled sign-ups on our Ruby-Talk mirror [1]. Give it a try!
I'd appreciate your feedback

2 Likes