RFC: Retiring inactive mailing lists

[Ben Cooksley]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 6:47 AM Christoph Cullmann <christoph at cullmann.io>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Tuesday, September 16th, 2025 at 20:36, Ben Cooksley <bcooksley at kde.org>
> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
> I would prefer the second choice.
> For sure there will be a few lists that need reviving in the future and
> that would make it easier.
> (and if I am wrong, which would be nice, I assume it is not that much more
> work)
>

It's pretty low effort to create a list, the only downside is the loss of
subscribers - and for those dead lists there is a good chance some of those
emails are no longer interested anyway, so we would probably want to blank
if the revival came after any length of time.
In the not too distant future we will need to move to Mailman 3, and i'd
very much prefer to only move over active things as part of that move.


>
>
>
>> 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?
>
>
> Good question, I would rather really get just a bounce, one never knows if
> not some old bugs point to them or other stuff and that
> then ends up on the other list we point it to.
>

Wouldn't this mean people like the person who did the Calligra porting work
would just see their email lost rather than sent to somewhere that has some
life?


> Btw., all that stuff really cries for a gardening team :) ironic that that
> list is dead, too.
> Perhaps one could revive that as GitLab team for all interested.
>
> Greetings
> Christoph
>
>
Thanks,
Ben
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