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Why use mailing lists?

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Re: Why use mailing lists?

#161

Post by Intermernet »

Erwyn wrote: post #145
Intermernet wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran multiple mail servers for years until about 10 years ago (moved out of the industry). The deliverability problem, as far as I know, hasn't really changed that much in the last decade. The key was to configure DKIM, SPF, only use secure protocols and monitor the various black/block-lists to make sure you aren't on them for very long. In my experience, if you end up on a few bad lists, and don't react quickly, th…

> It's not "plug-and-play", but it's not that hard. Once you've got it up and running the maintenance load goes to almost zero. This is where I disagree. In my opinion it might not be that hard but the maintenance is really not zero as you just described how you need a reputable IP as a prerequisite and constant monitoring of block lists. Just having DKIM, SPF and DMARC really was not enough last time I checked for g…

The monitoring of block lists is much more important than people assume. I haven't looked into it in detail, but it always seemed like the reputation was based on a ratio of number of messages to known bad messages. If you have a moderately busy server, and you manage to keep off the block lists (or at least pro-actively remove yourself from them) then the reputaion gets higher and higher, and the maintenance goes down.

If you're a domain that only receives occasional messages, and you end up on Spamhaus and co, you're gonna have a problem. It seems that reputation at small scale is viral. You need actively good reputation and response time. But, honestly, it seemed that it didn't take more than about 3 months per domain I administered until they were just accepted by the net as valid, good actors.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#162

Post by teddyh »

aidenn0 wrote: post #93
teeray wrote: post #19

I set one up for our HOA as a unified conversation and notification platform. Everyone now has exactly one email address to remember to notify everyone of, say, a graduation party where there might be some extra cars. Nobody needs Facebook, or a Google account for Groups, etc. When people move, their addresses just get updated in the list. The only trouble I had moderating it is people just love searching for whateve…

Fun fact: if you change the subject to a reply in Outlook (the desktop client; not sure about 365) it will automatically start a new thread. This feature was added because MS found that the "reply to last e-mail from intended recipients" was a common way for people to compose new e-mails.

Interesting. You could do the same thing automatically on the mailing list server side, right?

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#163

Post by Intermernet »

Erwyn wrote: post #145
Intermernet wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran multiple mail servers for years until about 10 years ago (moved out of the industry). The deliverability problem, as far as I know, hasn't really changed that much in the last decade. The key was to configure DKIM, SPF, only use secure protocols and monitor the various black/block-lists to make sure you aren't on them for very long. In my experience, if you end up on a few bad lists, and don't react quickly, th…

> It's not "plug-and-play", but it's not that hard. Once you've got it up and running the maintenance load goes to almost zero. This is where I disagree. In my opinion it might not be that hard but the maintenance is really not zero as you just described how you need a reputable IP as a prerequisite and constant monitoring of block lists. Just having DKIM, SPF and DMARC really was not enough last time I checked for g…

I just realised, and this could be red herring, that almost all of the domains I've administered were based in Australia. I suppose it's possible that the IP ranges I'm dealing with have a better reputation than those from other countries. I have administered a few domains from US companies and IPs, but they've often been based in known data centres which may help their cause. I can't really talk to the reliability of hosting a mail server on a consumer / small business IP in the US / Europe/ Asia. It's possible that all known, common IPs in these areas have a natural disadvantage when it comes to reputation. I suppose try running a tunnel from your server to a small VPS in a knwon data centre? Not ideal, but it may help.

It would be annoying if entire US/European/Asian ISP IP ranges were immediately blocked. We should have moved on from that for many reasons unrelated to email.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#164

Post by notepad0x90 »

whartung wrote: post #160
notepad0x90 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forums are fine. You understand I'm sure that federated is not the same as decentralized. Mailing lists are moderated, the list is hosted on a specific domain and that domain's owner can do whatever they want with the list. How is that different from a forum or some website? I don't like them but there mastodon,matrix,etc.. all open source and you can host them on a domain like you can a mailing list. They meet all y…

Mailing list delivery is centralized, but archiving is federated. How many folks have a full copy of, say, the last 1, 2, 5, 10 years of a long running mailing list? Client accessibility is up to the individual user. They can choose whatever client fits them best. I don’t know any mailing list software that signs messages as a sort of “yes, this message did travel through the mailing list” verification. Were it that…

If the mailing list server tampered with the message, everyone will get the false message. But if it is an encrypted group chat on matrix for example, you can 100% verify that the person posted that message (provided you've verified them, but even if you haven't, your logic of other people having verified it can be used).

As for archiving, you can archive mastodon, lemmy, bluesky, matrix,etc... as you said, if it was important, it can be made so for any open platform. Public archiving services will use APIs instead of mail clients, that's the only difference which shouldn't make a difference to users.

Even on the closed source platform twitter, there are public archives of things. Governments post official communication and records on there. Some governments are experimenting with Git for law publications. Nepal just voted an interim leader over discord!

This nostalgic thinking about mailing lists is incompatible with a technologist's mindset.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#165

Post by STRiDEX »

teeray wrote: post #19

I set one up for our HOA as a unified conversation and notification platform. Everyone now has exactly one email address to remember to notify everyone of, say, a graduation party where there might be some extra cars. Nobody needs Facebook, or a Google account for Groups, etc. When people move, their addresses just get updated in the list. The only trouble I had moderating it is people just love searching for whateve…

Our HoA uses google groups. Mild spam, but overall pretty good for threads. Too many people spam everyone asking for a plumber or whatever

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#166

Post by kertoip_1 »

> They impose minimal privacy risk.

Absolutely not. Privacy risk depends on how well protected is the weakest point in your network. So if one of the participants' device is compromised then the entire discussion is compromised too.

On closed, proprietary platform you just cut off the weakest point from access to the data when you suspect it is not protected enough, as data it lies on a single server. On mailing list you can't do anything, because data lies on somebody's else's server

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#167

Post by abnercoimbre »

bombcar wrote: post #153
abnercoimbre wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gradually switching our in-person community to Revolt [0] because we want to self-host and own the data. (Discord offers extreme convenience, but it's a black-box for-profit platform.) We don't want casual discourse to be indexed to the public. Instead we'll host a wiki system soon that bubbles up technical chatter into worthy articles. Is that a reasonable compromise? [0] https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The distinction between chat and email and forums was helpful mentally to compartmentalize - you’d expect people to act differently (forums even have things they call “chat” threads that are more like chat). The problem the “bubble up to Wiki” is that you need a specific subset of people with the technical know-how to understand the issue and solutions AND the time and desire to update the Wiki. One thing that can he…

Good advice, appreciate it!

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#169

Post by eikenberry »

perching_aix wrote: post #69
eikenberry wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Just because many people use mega-corp for email doesn't mean you need to. There are tons of alternative, small company providers or you can host your own. None of these require big-corp's support.

Because according to popular judgement, independent email hosting in the modern day is a very difficult ordeal. Is that true? Is that false? How would one tell? One's own experience will be trivially handwaved away as an anecdote, people's experiences will be handwaved away as hearsay, and a claim of general consensus will be handwaved away by other claims that the person pointing it out is just living in a bubble. P…

It is centralized (I wouldn't say "incredibly", but sufficiently) but because it is an open standard it doesn't matter. You can switch providers very easily with many options.

Re: Why use mailing lists?

#170

Post by immibis »

Erwyn wrote: post #144
immibis wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you consistently don't receive mail you expect, then you stop giving money to your mail host and get a different one.

It's not about receiving. Receiving is the easy part. It is about the delivery of your own mail. > you stop giving money to your mail host and get a different one. I was entertaining the "host your own mail server" thought, I agree that if you don't host it yourself then you can change your provider if it fails you.

Who needs the transmission more - the sender, or the recipient?

Much of the time, when it's for signup verification, especially for a free service, they just write "don't use @live.microsoft.com" underneath the email address box. The user wants to be signed up for the service more than the service provider wants a new user, at least by enough to use an alternate email address. Enough cases like this, and the user quits @live.microsoft.com.

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