Subject: Policy on cross-posting to multiple lists

From: Dean Rasheed <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 09:56:30 +0000

Has the policy on cross-posting to multiple lists been hardened recently?

The "Crash on ALTER TABLE" thread [1] started on -bugs, but Andrew's
message on 8 Jan with an initial proposed patch and my response later
that day both CC'ed -hackers and seem to have been rejected, and so
are missing from the archives.

In that case, it's not a big deal because subsequent replies included
the text from the missing messages, so it's still possible to follow
the discussion, but I wanted to check whether this was an intentional
change of policy. If so, it seems a bit harsh to flat-out reject these
messages. My prior understanding was that cross-posting, while
generally discouraged, does still sometimes have value.

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/CAEZATCVqksrnXybSaogWOzmVjE3O-NqMSpoHDuDw9_7mhNpeLQ%40mail.gmail.com#2c25e9a783d4685912dcef8b3f3edd63

Regards,
Dean

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 10:58:31 -0500

> Has the policy on cross-posting to multiple lists been hardened recently?

Not that I've heard of.

> are missing from the archives.

I've done the same recently, without problems.  I'd suggest inquiring
on the pgsql-www list; project infrastructure issues are not really
on-topic here.

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Amit Langote <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2019 01:11:40 +0900

> on the pgsql-www list; project infrastructure issues are not really

Fwiw, an email I sent yesterday was rejected similarly because I'd
tried to send it to both pgsql-hackers and pgsql-performance.  I
mentioned about that when I resent the same email successfully [1]
after dropping pgsql-performance from the list of recipients.

Thanks,
Amit

[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/96720c99-ffa0-01ad-c594-0504c8eda708%40lab.ntt.co.jp

---

From: Stephen Frost <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:18:35 -0500

Greetings,

(moving to -www as suggested downthread and as generally more
appropriate)

> Has the policy on cross-posting to multiple lists been hardened recently?

So, the short answer is 'yes'.

We've made a few different changes in the recent weeks.  The first
change that was made was actually to start dropping emails where the
list is being BCC'd.  That was done a couple of weeks ago and seems to
have gone well and has reduced the amount of spam our moderators are
dealing with.

This most recent change was to implement a policy where we don't allow
public lists to be CC'd with other public lists; when that happens we
instead reply with an email basically saying "please pick the right list
to send your email to."

Perhaps that hasn't been getting through to people...?  Though I had
someone respond to -owner basically saying "thanks, I'll pick the right
list", so at least some are seeing it.

As for how this change came to be implemented without much discussion
externally, I'm afraid that's probably the combination of "well, the BCC
change went just fine and no one complained", confusion between folks on
infra as to if we had only discussed it internally or if we had already
discussed it externally with people (the individual who actually made
the change *cough* apparently thought it had already been discussed
externally when we hadn't and probably should have at least announced
it when we did make the change anyway...), and general frustration among
some about the increasing number of cross-post emails we're getting
which really shouldn't be cross-posted.

In an ideal world, everyone would know that they really *shouldn't*
cross-post, and we also wouldn't have extremely long many-mailing-list
cross-posted threads, and we wouldn't need to have such a policy, but
that's not really where we are.

One thing which hadn't been considered and probably should have is the
impact on existing threads, but I'm not sure if we really could have
sensibly done something about that.

Then there's the big question which we really should have discussed
ahead of time, but, do people feel that such a restriction ends up doing
more harm than good?  Are there concerns about the BCC restriction?  In
the short period of time that it's been in place, I've seen some good
come from it in the form of people learning to post to the correct list
instead of just cross-posting to a bunch of lists, but I've also seen
(now) the cases where existing threads were confused do to the change,
so I suppose I'm on the fence, though I still tend towards having the
policy in place and hoping that it doesn't overly bother existing users
while helping newcomers.

We're here now though, so, thoughts?  Should I go undo it right away?
Should we see how it goes?  Try other things?  We could possibly have it
only apply to emails from people who don't have accounts or who aren't
subscribed to the lists?  Or have a flag on a per-account basis which
basically says "let me cross-post"?  Open to suggestions (note: I've not
run all the above ideas by the other pglister hacker *cough*, so I can't
say if all of them would be possible/reasonable, just throwing out
ideas).

Thanks!

Stephen

---

From: Alvaro Herrera <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 14:34:13 -0300

On 2019-Jan-10, Stephen Frost wrote:

> Are there concerns about the BCC restriction?

None here.

> We're here now though, so, thoughts?  Should I go undo it right away?

I don't like the crosspost ban, personally.  Some sort of limit makes
sense, but I think cross-posting to two lists should be allowed.  I
don't see an use case for cross-posting to more than two lists (though
maybe -hackers + -bugs + -docs would make sense ...)

-- 
Álvaro Herrera                https://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:47:03 -0500

> Perhaps that hasn't been getting through to people...?

If this was publicly announced anywhere, I didn't see it.
I would have pushed back if I had.  CC'ing -hackers on a reply to
a bug report is something I do all the time, and I do not think
it'd be a good idea to stop doing so, nor to make the thread
disappear from the -bugs archives.

I'm quite on board with the need to reduce useless cross-posting,
but this is not the solution.

Maybe there could be a different rule for initial submissions
(one list only) than follow-ups (can add lists)?

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Dean Rasheed <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 18:19:47 +0000

> instead reply with an email basically saying "please pick the right list

The problem with that as a mechanism for stopping people from cross
posting is that it doesn't (and can't) actually stop the message from
being delivered to people already on the CC list for that thread.

So in this case, Andrew first cross posted it, but I was already on
the CC list, so I got the message as normal, not realising that it
hadn't come via the lists. I then hit "Reply all" ... (rinse and
repeat). I didn't even immediately notice the failure to send the
message because my own reply just got added to end of the conversation
in my mail client, but presumably the intention was that both Andrew
and I should have noticed and re-posted to a single list. But of
course that would then have annoyed all the people already on the
thread who would have got duplicates of mails they had already
received.

Personally, I don't have a problem with people cross posting. I think
there are real cases where it's the right thing to do -- it's common
practice for legitimate reasons. Yes, it can be abused, but there are
worse abuses of email all the time.

Regards,
Dean

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 23:53:47 +0530

> but this is not the solution.

Agreed. Similarly, posts from pgadmin-support sometimes end up
intentionally being cross posted to pgadmin-hackers.

-- 
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

---

From: Stephen Frost <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 14:18:48 -0500

Greetings,

> intentionally being cross posted to pgadmin-hackers.

So, in implementing this we did consider that different lists might wish
for different policies and given that -hackers seems to be common among
the discussion, what if we just dropped the restriction for posts to
-hackers?

That is, emails to -bugs and -hackers would be allowed through to both
lists, cross-posts to -general and -sql, for example, would get the
bounce-back.

As there seems relatively little downside, I've gone ahead and made that
change, but I don't mean to forstall further discussion.  Should we
apply that change to other lists?  To all of them?

Tom's idea about allowing cross-posts on replies is an interesting one
as well.  I've also added a certain someone to the thread explicitly to
see what his thoughts are on that, and the rest.

Thanks!

Stephen

---

From: Robert Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 14:46:46 -0500

> Are there concerns about the BCC restriction?

One thing people sometimes do when something is posted to the wrong
list is (1) reply, (2) explain in the reply that the message was
posted to the wrong pace, (3) move the original list from Cc into Bcc,
and (4) add the correct list into Cc.  That has the advantage that
people on the original list can see that someone replied (which avoids
duplicate replies by different people) and know where to go to find
the rest of the discussion if they want to see it.

I think the idea of allowing 2 lists but not >2 is probably a good
one.  Also, it might be good to be more permissive for, say, people
who have successfully posted at least 1000 emails to the lists.  Such
people presumably are less likely to do abusive things, and more
likely to care about and heed any correction given to them.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

---

From: Stephen Frost <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 15:03:32 -0500

Greetings,

> the rest of the discussion if they want to see it.

While considering that, we actively went and looked at both the
frequency and the success of that approach and, frankly, neither were
very inspiring.  There were very few cases of that being tried and, as I
recall anyway, none of them were actually successful in 'moving' the
thread- that is, people continued on the original list to begin with
anyway, except that some of the thread was now on another list.

We had discussed allowing bcc's to lists when we detect that there's at
least *some* valid list in the To or Cc line, but it didn't seem
worthwhile given the research that was done.

For some (private) lists, we have the policy set to moderate emails
which bcc those lists (such as -security).  Also, the "don't CC multiple
lists" was only applied to public/archived lists to begin with,
intentionally.

> likely to care about and heed any correction given to them.

Yeah, that's in-line with what I had suggested up-thread where we have
some kind of flag which can either be set by the user themselves (maybe
we have some language above the flag that cautions against cross-posts
and whatnot), or set by the system (>1000 emails, as you say, or maybe
"after 2 weeks of being subscribed to a list", similar to the community
account "cooling off" period we have), or maybe by the list admins
(likely initially based on a heuristic of "lots of emails sent" or
something, but then handled on an individual basis).

I am a little concerned that we make the system too complicated for
people to understand too though.  Haven't got a particularly good answer
for that, sadly.

Thanks!

Stephen

---

From: Andres Freund <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:27:00 -0800

Hi,

> disappear from the -bugs archives.

+1

This seems quite the significant change to make without public
discussion.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

---

From: Andres Freund <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 12:52:50 -0800

On 2019-01-10 12:18:35 -0500, Stephen Frost wrote:
> Should I go undo it right away?

Yes.

---

From: Tatsuo Ishii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2019 10:08:04 +0900 (JST)

> intentionally being cross posted to pgadmin-hackers.

Another use case is, pgsql-docs and pgsql-hackers. For non trivial
documentation changes I would like to register a doc patch to CF, but
CF app does not pick up any messages other than posted in
pgsql-hackers. So to discuss with pgsql-doc subscribers, while dealing
with CF app, I would like cross postings for pgsql-hackers and
pgsql-docs.

Best regards,
--
Tatsuo Ishii
SRA OSS, Inc. Japan
English: http://www.sraoss.co.jp/index_en.php
Japanese:http://www.sraoss.co.jp

---

From: Stephen Frost <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2019 11:38:05 -0500

Greetings,

> with CF app, I would like cross postings for pgsql-hackers and

So, cross-posting between -hackers and -docs should be working now,
thanks to the change I made yesterday.

After stealing some time from Magnus to chat quickly about this (he
seems to be mostly unavailable at present), what we're trying to figure
out is what the group, overall, wants, and in particular if the change
to allow cross-posting with -hackers solves the valid use-cases while
preventing the invalid use-cases (like cross-posting between -general,
-performance, and -sql).

Of course, it isn't perfect, but then it's unlikely that anything will
be.  Changes which require us to write additional code into pglister
will, of course, take longer, but we can work towards it if there's
agreement about what such a change would look like.  In the interim, we
could see how things go with the current configuration, or we could add
other lists to the 'exclude', beyond just -hackers and the private
lists, or we could add them all (effectively going back to where things
were before the changes were made).

Thoughts?  Specific votes in one of those directions would help me, at
least, figure out what should be done today.

Thanks!

Stephen

---

From: Robert Haas <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2019 11:43:09 -0500

> least, figure out what should be done today.

Well, you know, you could just undo the ban which you imposed
unilaterally and which nobody so far has said they liked, and multiple
people have said they disliked.  Then after having the public
discussion about what the policy should be, you could implement the
conclusions of that discussion.

I mean, personally, I have no problem with SOME cross-posting
restrictions, but nothing you've proposed so far seems very good,
other than maybe the >2 rule.  But if you're looking to understand
what people want better, you don't really need more votes.  What has
been said by a whole bunch of people is not in any significant way
unclear.  They don't like the restrictions, and they do like being
consulted.

---

From: Andres Freund <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2019 10:23:53 -0800

Hi,

> preventing the invalid use-cases (like cross-posting between -general,

Those don't really seem to be common and painful enough to really need a
technical solution.  -performance still seems like a useful subset of
people, and sometimes threads migrate to/from there. I'd personally just
merge -sql with -general, it doesn't seem to have a use-case left
anymore. But that can be done later.

> least, figure out what should be done today.

I think you should just revert to the prior state, and then we can
discuss potential solutions and the problems they're intended to
address. I find it baffling that after being called out for
unilateral/not publicly discussed decisions you attempt to address that
criticism by continuing to make unilateral decisions.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

---

From: Alvaro Herrera <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2019 15:33:25 -0300

> address.

+1

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2019 21:18:48 +0100

> > discuss potential solutions and the problems they're intended to

I've reverted this change across all lists it was enabled for.

And for the record, I'm the one who asked Stephen to go for a second round
of feedback and not just immediately revert it (he pinged me on chat, as I
was unable to keep track of the mail thread myself due to other commitments
and airplanes and things).

-- 
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: https://www.hagander.net/ <http://www.hagander.net/>
 Work: https://www.redpill-linpro.com/ <http://www.redpill-linpro.com/>

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2019 16:11:01 -0500

Same here.  The problem you want to solve has been there for decades,
we don't need a solution urgently.

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Stephen Frost <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 May 2020 13:48:38 -0400

Greetings,

> we don't need a solution urgently.

So, this thread never got to anywhere and, unsurprisingly, we're seeing
not just a continuing set of cross-posts that shouldn't be, but an
increase in them.

At this point, I'd suggest we start moderating such cross-posts, letting
moderators know that they should reject ones that aren't done with any
thought to it with a request to the submitter to please pick a list
instead of spamming them all.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Stephen

---

From: Julien Rouhaud <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 May 2020 19:54:34 +0200

> instead of spamming them all.

Huge +1

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 May 2020 15:04:10 -0400

> instead of spamming them all.

+1 ... the problem does seem to be getting worse lately.

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2020 17:51:59 +0200

> +1 ... the problem does seem to be getting worse lately.

I finally managed to get around to pushing code into pglister that allows a
"moderate" policy to be configured for CC handling on lists, and not just
discard (it was originally decided we would never want this, but it's
pretty clear the ideas around this has changed).

We have a few internal lists set to discard at this point. And to be clear
of the differences:
* Allow -- any number of CCs are allowed
* Moderate -- if more than one list is in to or cc, email gets moderated
and sender gets a notice (with option to withdraw)
* Discard -- if more than one list in to or cc, email gets discarded, and
sender gets a notice

If an email is cced between a list that's moderate and one that's discard,
it gets discarded from the one list and moderated on the other one, and the
sender gets two separate notices. If it's cced between two lists that are
both in moderate, the sender gets one moderation notice for each of them.
If it's only cced between lists with discard policy, sender gets a single
notice.

I haven't (yet) reconfigured any lists. But right now all our general lists
have policy "allow". Should we more or less change all our public lists to
be "moderate"?

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 2020 13:14:55 -0400

> have policy "allow". Should we more or less change all our public lists to

The only case that might be a bad idea IMO is cross-posts between
pgsql-bugs and other lists.  I could personally do without that case
too, but we have done it often in the past (and I think there's at
least one such thread active right now).

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Stephen Frost <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2020 08:21:17 -0400

Greetings,

> least one such thread active right now).

Such cases wouldn't be dropped- just moderated, at least until/unless we
implement something to allow bypassing that moderation in some cases.

+1 for enabling it across the board and then we can keep an eye on it
and if it becomes a lot of effort for moderators or we end up with
things getting too delayed then we can always adjust either the lists
this is applied to, or have a mechanism/flag to allow certain posters to
bypass this particular moderation, or similar.

In addition, I would add this to: https://www.postgresql.org/list/

Tip #3: Choose the most appropriate list

Choose the most appropriate individual list for your question-
please do not cross-post between the mailing lists (unless there is a
specific reason, such as a confirmed bug reported on -bugs leading into
a discussion which is appropriate for -hackers).  Cross-posted emails
(ones where more than one list is included in the To or CC) will be
moderated and therefore will also take longer to reach subscribers.

(or something along those lines)

Lastly, let's make sure to notify all the moderators explicitly of the
change- I'm not sure if all of them follow -www.

Thanks,

Stephen

---

From: Stephen Frost <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2020 10:23:22 -0400

Greetings,

> moderated and therefore will also take longer to reach subscribers.

Concretely, I propose to push the attached later today, unless anyone
has an issue with it.

This restructures the page a bit to title the Tips section explicitly,
and moves the title for Subscribing/Unsubscribing down to actually be
over that part of the page, and adds a paragraph explicitly talking
about Unsubscribing, since we didn't actually have that before (even
though the title implied we did..).

Thanks,

Stephen
diff --git a/django/archives/mailarchives/templates/index.html b/django/archives/mailarchives/templates/index.html
new file mode 100644
index 97adf41..f2121d1
*** a/django/archives/mailarchives/templates/index.html
--- b/django/archives/mailarchives/templates/index.html
*************** The <a href="https://lists.postgresql.or
*** 17,23 ****
  
  and many more.
  
! <h2>How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe</h2>
  
  <p>To help ensure you have a productive experience on the PostgreSQL experience, we have a few tips to get you started on your journey:</p>
  
--- 17,23 ----
  
  and many more.
  
! <h2>Tips For Using the PostgreSQL Mailing Lists</h2>
  
  <p>To help ensure you have a productive experience on the PostgreSQL experience, we have a few tips to get you started on your journey:</p>
  
*************** and many more.
*** 31,42 ****
--- 31,55 ----
  <p>If your email address is protected by a mail-back anti-spam system, this could cause some issues with our mailing list system. If it is discovered that your email address has implemented one of these systems, we may have to automatically unsubscribe your account.
  </p>
  
+ <h3>Tip #3: Choose The Most Appropriate List</h3>
+ 
+ <p>Choose the most appropriate individual list for your question.  Please do not cross-post (have multiple mailing lists in one email) unless there is a specific reason (such as a confirmed bug report being cross-posted to the hackers mailing list).  Instead, choose the most appropriate list for your email and send it there.  Cross-posted emails will be moderated and therefore will also take longer to reach the subscribers if approved.
+ </p>
+ 
+ <h2>How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe</h2>
+ 
  <h3>Subscribing to a PostgreSQL Mailing List</h3>
  
  <p>
  Ready to join the PostgreSQL community? You can subscribe to one of our mailing lists at <a href="https://lists.postgresql.org/" target="_blank">lists.postgresql.org</a>.
  </p>
  
+ <h3>Unsubscribing from a PostgreSQL Mailing List</h3>
+ 
+ <p>
+ You can manage your subscriptions and unsubscribe from our mailing lists at <a href="https://lists.postgresql.org/" target="_blank">lists.postgresql.org</a>.
+ </p>
+ 
  <h2>Mailing List Archives</h2>
  
  <p>The PostgreSQL Mailing list public archives provide a rich history of the PostgreSQL project, all the way back to 1997! We keep a public record of the mailing list to help provide a searchable resource to help answer your questions, as well as in the spirit of building an open community.</p>

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2020 12:41:02 +0200

> though the title implied we did..).

LGTM.

---

From: Stephen Frost <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2020 09:32:37 -0400

Greetings,

> > though the title implied we did..).

Thanks, pushed.

With that done, I think we can go ahead and enable the moderation of
cross-posted emails.

Thanks!

Stephen

---

From: Alvaro Herrera <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2020 15:49:23 -0300

> With that done, I think we can go ahead and enable the moderation of

BTW now that this is working, I think we should discuss that if person A
cross-posts, and that post is approved, then whenever person B replies
it should also be approved -- surely there's no need to approve the
cross-posting (for the known subset of lists) for each reply.

(We were just bitten by that in thread
https://postgr.es/m/[email-masked] )

Right?

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2020 15:03:46 -0400

> cross-posting (for the known subset of lists) for each reply.

If that can be automated it'd surely make things noticeably less painful.
As is, once somebody's started a multi-list thread, the only way to get
out of trouble is for someone to remember to remove other lists from a
reply ... and even then, if anyone replies to an earlier post, it's a mess
all over again.  But I didn't realize we had the ability to pre-approve
whole threads for this filter?

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2020 21:17:07 +0200

> whole threads for this filter?

We don't. And I don't see an obvious way to do it either.