RFC: Retiring inactive mailing lists

[Ben Cooksley]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 3:07 AM Christoph Cullmann <christoph at cullmann.io>
wrote:

> Hi,
>

Hi Christoph,


>
>
> On Monday, September 15th, 2025 at 20:42, Ben Cooksley <bcooksley at kde.org>
> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 16, 2025 at 4:14 AM Christoph Cullmann <christoph at cullmann.io>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> https://invent.kde.org/websites/kde-org/-/work_items/42
>>
>> should now contain state of the lists we have.
>>
>
> Thanks Christoph. The really sad part is people who have sent patches or
> otherwise have been interested haven't received replies, and in my mind
> that really justifies closure and redirection of those lists.
>
> Does someone want to file some tickets and i'll then proceed with closing
> down the dead lists?
> (noting where needed if a list should be merged into another list)
>
>
> I am not sure what the best process is.
>
> I would assume to close all lists that not had any mail since the last
> 2023 'are you alive' ping is save.
>
> That is close to 2 years.
>
> I guess mailman allows to re-open closed lists if ever the need arises?
>

Depends on how I do the closure.

Normally when we close a mailing list we fully remove it, so the only thing
left behind is the list archives.
That means the list of subscribers, etc. is fully purged.

If we were okay with reopened lists starting from scratch then that is fine.

Otherwise we would have to delete the mail forwarding into Mailman but
leave the list itself still registered in Mailman and set the list to
hidden/private.


>
> All other stuff needs in detail discussion I guess.
>
> Is our mailing list mail server able to generate more graceful bounce
> mails that contain some generic contact info like
>
> 'head to kde.org/xyz...'
>
> for people that try some non-existing address?
>

We can add entries to the blocked-destinations list to achieve some level
of customisation, however the sender will still receive back the bounce
email that would contain just that one line of text we can provide as part
of blocked-destinations.
Anything else would require quite a bit more setup.

For most of the dead lists though we could forward them easily enough to
one of our existing lists which is probably a better user experience?


>
> Greetings
> Christoph
>

Thanks,
Ben


>
>
>
>> We have plenty that seem really dead.
>>
>> Greetings
>> Christoph
>>
>
> Thanks,
> Ben
>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday, September 14th, 2025 at 20:06, Christoph Cullmann <
>> christoph at cullmann.io> wrote:
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> > Hi,
>> >
>>
>> > I created some issue to at first at all collect some info:
>> >
>>
>> > https://invent.kde.org/websites/kde-org/-/issues/42
>> >
>>
>> > Given the last real investigation what is dead was 2023 will take a new
>> look at the archives.
>> >
>>
>> > Greetings
>> > Christoph
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> >
>>
>> > On Sunday, September 14th, 2025 at 14:31, Nicolas Fella
>> nicolas.fella at gmx.de wrote:
>> >
>>
>> > > Am 13.09.25 um 20:34 schrieb Christoph Cullmann:
>> >
>>
>> > > > Hi,
>> >
>>
>> > > > we have a mass of mailing lists around on
>> >
>>
>> > > > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo
>> >
>>
>> > > > and many of them are totally unused or just gather bug mails like:
>> >
>>
>> > > > https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-multimedia/
>> >
>>
>> > > > Even 'my' own kwrite-devel is close to unused and I moderate xxx
>> times more spam
>> > > > than real mails.
>> >
>>
>> > > > My proposal would be to close most of the inactive lists and (if at
>> all needed)
>> > > > point people to our
>> >
>>
>> > > > https://discuss.kde.org/
>> >
>>
>> > > Makes sense to me.
>> >
>>
>> > > If we do that we also need to make sure we clean up references to the
>> > > old lists, e.g. https://apps.kde.org/ark/ refers to the
>> kde-utils-devel ML
>> >
>>
>> > > Cheers
>> >
>>
>> > > Nico
>
>
>
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