OSGeo email list admin approval emails not getting through

[camerons]

Hi SAC, I (cameron . shorter AT gmail . com) am one of the admins for the ​https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/lexicon email list.

For some reason, I have not been receiving emails when people try to subscribe to our email list from the main page: ​https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/lexicon. When I log into ​https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/admindb/lexicon, I can't see any outstanding admin tasks, as should be the case.

It is as if the attempt to subscribe is automatically rejected.

However, I am able to add people from the Mass subscription page: ​https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/admin/lexicon/members/add

Could someone please have a look.

Comment from Jorge:

Sorry but til Thursday I'm on holidays and there's not much I can do. In any case this is something to bring to the SAC, since looks more related with the mail server (no idea what we have) than mailman itself.

[neteler]

I quickly checked:

root@osgeo6: # grep cameron.shorter /var/log/mail.log.* | grep status=sent | wc -l
39

That looks fine. Are you sure that it isn't a suboptimal list setting?

[camerons]

Thanks for looking Markus. I've tried subscribing from my work account yesterday: shortcam AT google . com

I didn't received an email (to this work address) asking me to confirm my application, as you would expect. Searching for shortcam@ might provide some insights.

[camerons]

Yes, it might be a list setting, but which one? I can't remember changing any list settings, and can't see an obvious setting that I should change.

[neteler]

Replying to camerons:

Thanks for looking Markus. I've tried subscribing from my work account yesterday: shortcam AT google . com

root@osgeo6:/home/neteler# grep shortcam /var/log/mail.log.* 
/var/log/mail.log.1:Aug  9 14:28:53 osgeo6 postfix/smtp[5958]: 5862D6143E89: to=<shortcamXXXXXe.com>, relay=aspmx.l.google.com[74.125.195.27]:25, delay=3, delays=0.01/0.01/0.13/2.9, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 OK  1597008533 n1si10324828pjp.169 - gsmtp)

Looks ok?

[camerons]

Markus, that log message aligns roughly when I would have self-subscribed. However, I can't find it in my email inbox.

Is it possible that the message could have been lost at the OSGeo end even though this log message is created? Is there some sort of spam filtering?

You might want to test by trying to subscribe to ​​https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/lexicon yourself.

I'm happy to share admin access to the list if someone needs it.

[neteler]

Replying to camerons:

Markus, that log message aligns roughly when I would have self-subscribed. However, I can't find it in my email inbox.

Is it possible that the message could have been lost at the OSGeo end even though this log message is created?

That's very unlikely but I am no expert here.

Is there some sort of spam filtering?

We do greylisting on incoming messages; nothing on outgoing messages (AFAIK).

You might want to test by trying to subscribe to ​​https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/lexicon yourself.

Jut did so. Do you have to approve it?

I'm happy to share admin access to the list if someone needs it.

I could compare the settings to those of grass-dev.

[camerons]

Thanks for the debugging offer Markus, I've just sent you a private email with our list admin details.

[neteler]

So, all "lexicon" related messages ended up in SPAM in Gmail...

• your email to me
• list subscription related emails

Is "lexicon" such a bad word for Google Mail?

(I now try to compare the list settings)

[neteler]

Settings difference:

​https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/admin/lexicon/privacy/recipient

Recipient filters

Must posts have list named in destination (to, cc) field (or be among the acceptable alias names, specified below)?

• lexicon: yes
• grass-dev: no

I have no insights which one is better...

[camerons]

Thanks Markus. I've now found my confirmation email in my spam folder. (I'm feeling silly for not checking that earlier.)

Gmail's comment next to the email was that similar emails had been identified as spam in the past.

Thanks so much for your help. I'm not I'll have much luck fixing google's gmail spam filter algorithm, but as a work around I'll add warnings from our wiki pages.

I'll set this issue as fixed.