Re: [Feedback request] Decommissioning of unused mailing lists (>5yrs no postings)

Hi,

First of all, Erik, thank you for mustering the energy to take care of this
migration and inventorying of the lists. Does anyone volunteer to be part
of a Mailing Lists Working Committee which can make a point of periodically
inventorying and auditing these lists for spam, active moderators, etc? You
would get all the technical support you need.

I note that some of these are still very much active projects but they've
scattered elsewhere over the years, for example cl-pdf hosts their code at
github and appears to communicate pretty much exclusively through github
Issues. Even some active projects hosted at our own gitlab may be
communicating through gitlab Issues or other means and thus not register
any mailing list traffic through our mailman.

Anyway, if none of a particular project's mailing lists have been active in
several years, then it's difficult to make any case for keeping said list
active, in the face of the overhead costs Erik mentions, especially if they
can be re-activated easily when needed. However, in the Common Lisp
space-time continuum, five years is not all that long. I'd be curious what
the numbers look like if you go back eight or even 10 years?

Erik, did you say that you sent verification emails to the list owners of
these lists? Is the list owner by definition the only moderator, or can
they assign other moderators? As I understand it, we can detect
non-responsive moderators by seeing mails bounce to an admin account, is
that right? If so, how can volunteers sign up to be privvy to those bounced
mails and perhaps help to mitigate? Is that just another list to sign up
for through the mailman3 web page?

One other question for Erik - are these active lists and archives publicly
crawl-able? Because that brings up the whole question of what is CLF's
position on serving up for free such content, which is under the
stewardship of clnet infrastructure, to all comers, including the slew of
neural net training hoovers which now apparently a permanent feature of
life online. But that's a discussion for a different thread.

Thanks again!

 Dave



On Thu, Jul 13, 2023 at 7:24 AM Erik Huelsmann <[email protected]> wrote:

> All,
>
>
> As part of the migration from Mailman2 to Mailman3, I have checked which
> lists are actively used. The outcome allows for some rigorous cleanup.
>
> Out of 236 mailing lists, 180 have not had a mail added to their archives *over
> the last 5 years(!)*. My proposal is to decommission these mailing lists,
> meaning that only the archives will be migrated to Mailman3. These mailing
> lists can always be re-instated at a later time.
>
> Rationale for this clean-up is that some owners of the mailing lists have
> fallen out of contact, causing additional work to fall on the shoulders of
> the site maintainers: mailing lists require moderation of non-member posts,
> where those moderation requests which can't be delivered to the list owner,
> are sent to the site admins. Additionally, unused mailing lists may accrue
> spam mail in their archives, lowering the value of the archive.
> (Temporarily) Closing mailing lists can prevent this.
>
>
> What do you think?
>
>
> It concerns these lists:
>
> alexandria-cvs
> anaphora-cvs
> anaphora-devel
> ansi-test-cvs
> ansi-test-devel
> armedbear-announce
> armedbear-cvs
> asdf-install-devel
> asdf-packaging-announce
> aspiwork-pdm-cvs
> aspiwork-pdm-devel
> bese-devel
> bordeaux-threads-announce
> bordeaux-threads-ticket
> boston-lisp-announce
> boston-lisp-organizers
> cello-devel
> cells-gtk-devel
> cffi-objects-cvs
> cl-berkeley-db-devel
> cl-bzip2-devel
> cl-containers-devel
> cl-dbf-cvs
> cl-dwim-devel
> cl-ec2-devel
> cl-emb-devel
> cl-facebook-devel
> cl-fuse-devel
> cl-glpk-devel
> cl-graph-devel
> cl-gsl-devel
> cl-gtk2-devel
> cl-heap-announce
> cl-jpeg-devel
> cl-json-announce
> cl-kanren-trs-cvs
> cl-kanren-trs-devel
> cl-l10n-devel
> cl-monad-macros-cvs
> cl-mpi-devel
> cl-muproc-devel
> cl-ncurses-devel
> cl-neo4j-cvs
> cl-neo4j-devel
> cl-openid-devel
> cl-openid-ticket
> cl-org-mode-devel
> cl-pdf-announce
> cl-pdf-devel
> cl-perec-devel
> cl-plus-j-announce
> cl-plus-j-devel
> cl-plus-ssl-cvs
> cl-plus-ssl-devel
> cl-pop-devel
> cl-proc-devel
> cl-sbml-cvs
> cl-selenium-devel
> cl-smtp-devel
> cl-soap-devel
> cl-sqlite-announce
> cl-sqlite-devel
> cl-store-devel
> cl-table-cvs
> cl-twitter-devel
> cl-typesetting-announce
> cl-typesetting-devel
> cl-unification-devel
> cl-utilities-devel
> cl-walker-devel
> cl-xmlspam-devel
> cl-xmpp-devel
> cl-yacc-ebnf-devel
> clbuild-devel
> cldoc-devel
> cleric-announce
> cleric-devel
> clfswm-announce
> clfswm-cvs
> clfswm-devel
> climacs-devel
> climplayer-devel
> clonsigna-announce
> clonsigna-devel
> closer-announce
> closer-devel
> clouchdb-cvs
> clouchdb-devel
> clsql-fluid-devel
> clx-devel
> cmucl-ticket
> common-lisp-beginner-cvs
> de-setf-amqp-cvs
> definer-announce
> docudown-devel
> eager-future-devel
> ecl-readline-devel
> eclipse-devel
> editor-hints-devel
> elephant-devel
> elephant-ticket
> f2cl-ticket
> fetter-devel
> fiveam-announce
> fset-devel
> gecol-devel
> ginseng-cvs
> gsharp-devel
> gtk-cffi-cvs
> gtk-cffi-devel
> heresy-devel
> implementation-hackers
> iolib-announce
> iolib-devel
> ip-interfaces-devel
> isidorus-devel
> kpax-devel
> l-math-announce
> l-math-devel
> langutils-devel
> lgtk-devel
> lift-devel
> linedit-cvs
> linedit-devel
> lisp-interface-library-devel
> lisp-machine
> lispbox-cvs
> lispbox-devel
> lisplab-cvs
> lisplab-devel
> lisppaste-devel
> lisppaste-requests
> lispy-devel
> lmud-devel
> local-time-devel
> mel-base-devel
> metabang-bind-devel
> metacopy-devel
> metatilities-base-devel
> mit-cadr-cvs
> mod-lisp-devel
> movitz-devel
> names-and-paths-devel
> nixies-devel
> noctool-cvs
> oct-cvs
> oct-ticket
> pal-devel
> parenscript-announce
> pg-devel
> plexippus-xpath-devel
> protobuf-devel
> python-on-lisp-devel
> rfc2388-cvs
> rucksack-cvs
> rucksack-devel
> s-xml-devel
> sicl-announce
> sicl-devel
> slime-cvs
> snow-announce
> snow-cvs
> snow-devel
> spray-devel
> teepeedee2-devel
> the-feebs-war-devel
> tinaa-devel
> travisci
> trivial-backtrace-devel
> trivial-gray-streams-devel
> trivial-utf-8-devel
> uri-template-devel
> usocket-announce
> usocket-ticket
> vivace-graph-devel
> web4r-devel
> web4r-devel-ja
> xcvb-devel
> xuriella-devel
> zip-devel
>
>
> --
> Bye,
>
> Erik.
>
> http://efficito.com -- Hosted accounting and ERP.
> Robust and Flexible. No vendor lock-in.
>


-- 
My Best,

Dave Cooper, [email protected]
genworks.com, gendl.org
+1 248-330-2979