Possible Problem with Mailing List Setup
About a week ago I sent four mails to this mailing list without being subscribed. For each mail I got a reply that the message awaits moderator approval. After that I subscribed to the list, because it is low volume, and I want to spare the moderator some approval work. Shortly after that my subscription to the list got approved. But to date the messages sent before did not appear on the list. After waiting for a week, I revised the four messages and sent them again. So the not approved mails are obsolete by now. Since I assume that most moderators would not approve me subscribing to the list after I sent four disapproved messages, the most probably thing is that the messages got lost. I.e. sending mail to this list without being subscribed currently is not possible. Best wishes Sebastian
On 1/26/20 5:50 PM, Sebastian Miele wrote:
About a week ago I sent four mails to this mailing list without being subscribed. For each mail I got a reply that the message awaits moderator approval. After that I subscribed to the list, because it is low volume, and I want to spare the moderator some approval work.
Shortly after that my subscription to the list got approved. But to date the messages sent before did not appear on the list. After waiting for a week, I revised the four messages and sent them again. So the not approved mails are obsolete by now.
Since I assume that most moderators would not approve me subscribing to the list after I sent four disapproved messages, the most probably thing is that the messages got lost. I.e. sending mail to this list without being subscribed currently is not possible.
As I understand it, your messages are also slightly “off-topic” on this list. To report errors, better use the ntg-context list (that is what I do at least) and only submit patches to dev-context. The low volume on this list is intentional, because it's only fixes and patches. Cheers, Henri
Best wishes Sebastian _______________________________________________ dev-context mailing list dev-context@ntg.nl https://mailman.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/dev-context
On Sun, 26 Jan 2020 at 09:02, Henri Menke wrote:
On 1/26/20 5:50 PM, Sebastian Miele wrote:
About a week ago I sent four mails to this mailing list without being subscribed. For each mail I got a reply that the message awaits moderator approval. After that I subscribed to the list, because it is low volume, and I want to spare the moderator some approval work.
Shortly after that my subscription to the list got approved. But to date the messages sent before did not appear on the list. After waiting for a week, I revised the four messages and sent them again. So the not approved mails are obsolete by now.
The emails which went through are listed here: https://mailman.ntg.nl/pipermail/dev-context/2020/thread.html and none of your messages are pending moderation any longer.
Since I assume that most moderators would not approve me subscribing to the list after I sent four disapproved messages, the most probably thing is that the messages got lost. I.e. sending mail to this list without being subscribed currently is not possible.
As I understand it, your messages are also slightly “off-topic” on this list.
I didn't read your messages, so I don't want to make any judgments about whether the content was off-topic or not, I just wanted to clarify that: - There might be dozens of spam messages per day, and less than one legit message per month. - At that ratio it's very very very likely that legit messages get unnoticed in the sea of spam and discarded (I'm actually not sure why we don't simply send a message saying "sorry, your message won't be delivered, please subscribe" instead, but I'm not even sure if that's an option). - There's only one moderator reminder email per day. What moderators always notice are new subscriptions. Carefully going through zillion of spam messages to find any false negatives is another issue. - It's very very unlikely that anyone would disapprove a legitimate message about ConTeXt on purpose, even if it wasn't "fully on topic", as you say. A lot more likely is that it was discarded by accident. The only intention of moderation is to prevent advertisements for blue pills etc. ... ;) What you can always do is subscribe and opt out of receiving emails. Then you can freely post, the only problem is getting email with replies to which you want to reply again later. Maybe the mailing list could automatically add the sender to CC, that often sounds like a better option (this would need to be changed by the admin).
To report errors, better use the ntg-context list (that is what I do at least) and only submit patches to dev-context. The low volume on this list is intentional, because it's only fixes and patches.
I don't know if the low volume is really intentional, or more like a consequence of not too many people sending patches, and those few who do, do that directly to Hans, circumventing the mailing list. (I have a feeling that the initial intention was the opposite: to not bother users on the main list with complex off-topic stuff that they don't understand anyway. But that's just a wild guess.) In any case it's true that most of the discussions happen on ntg-context. And it's also true that the volume is relatively high there. Mojca
Hi Mojca,
Mojca Miklavec
I didn't read your messages, so I don't want to make any judgments about whether the content was off-topic or not, I just wanted to clarify that:
[..]
Thank you for the clarification.
I don't know if the low volume is really intentional, or more like a consequence of not too many people sending patches, and those few who do, do that directly to Hans, circumventing the mailing list. (I have a feeling that the initial intention was the opposite: to not bother users on the main list with complex off-topic stuff that they don't understand anyway. But that's just a wild guess.) In any case it's true that most of the discussions happen on ntg-context. And it's also true that the volume is relatively high there.
As of now, I know nearly nothing about ConTeXt, so I would not understand most of what is going on ntg-context. First, I will try to understand as much as possible about ConTeXt from past to present (i.e. historically, after having worked through a lot of Knuth's original stuff, and having read quite some papers), and from bottom to top (from ((Plain) Knuth) TeX and Lua through LuaMetaTeX to ConTeXt). In the past I tried to do similar things the other way around, but always found it quite unsatisfactory rather quickly. This time, I just take the (very) long way. So, for now, I will hit mostly stuff that is not relevant to (most) users, but (hopefully) relevant to developers. For now, I will proceed to post to this list, but I will reconsider the decision when I reached substantial parts of the top (ConTeXt user facing stuff).
participants (3)
-
Henri Menke -
Mojca Miklavec -
Sebastian Miele