DragonFlyBSD Project Update - colo upgrade, future trends

[Matthew Dillon]

The mailing list software has been less than stellar, but the bigger
problem is in areas that we have very little control over.  We have no
control over other people's spam filters, and the mailing list software
itself has to deal with a constant influx of spam (which is why you have to
be subscribed, now).   It is almost impossible to manage it any other way.
Nearly all of the internet has moved on to WWW based forum-like mechanisms
because they are a whole lot easier to manage.  We're going to have to as
well.

I feel that we do not have a choice here.  Privately-run mail systems, in
general, are almost dead due to the spam load.  I have to forward my own
personal domain email through GMail just to be able to continue using it
and my GMail spam mailbox consistently contains more than 3000 spams in it
(30-day expiration, so ... 100+ spams per day). And that doesn't count the
ones Google auto-deletes immediately or the ones my smtp server discards.
 I've tried everything possible to keep my personal domain and dragonfly's
domain email usable but its an impossible task.

-Matt

On Sun, Jul 28, 2019 at 1:41 PM Constantine A. Murenin <mureninc at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Mon, 22 Jul 2019 at 15:56, Matthew Dillon <dillon at backplane.com> wrote:
>
>> The mailing lists are not seeing much if any activity any more.  This is
>> more a generational issue... people kinda prefer web-based forums these
>> days and younger generations do not use mailing lists at all for group
>> stuff (not really).  Even the devs almost universally use IRC and not
>> mailing lists for discussions now (its kinda too bad that we don't have a
>> permanent irc log stored on DFly servers for posterity).  So we are looking
>> into potentially shifting user interaction to a web-based forum, perhaps
>> this year, and retiring the mailing lists, leaving just an archive for the
>> mailing list.  Possibly sometime this year, so look for action on that
>> upcoming.
>>
>
> I would think that part of this must be because messages sent to the
> mailing lists are silently discarded from non-subscribers.  IME,
> DragonFlyBSD.org doesn't even send out any error messages in this
> instance.  I've repeatedly had this happen to me, several times over the
> years, and I bet others have been affected as well.  On OpenBSD.org, in
> these instances, you simply receive a confirmation email asking you to
> confirm that you've sent the message (good because the feedback and the
> resolution are both instant — apart from the greylisting by PF spamd).  On
> FreeBSD.org, depending on list, moderators eventually approve any such
> messages (often causing a delay of several days).
>
> I think it'll be a sad day to see the mailing lists go.  They are so much
> better than the forums from so many perspectives, including archival.  I
> find forums problematic due to censorship and lack of accountability, not
> to mention archival issues — not even posters themselves would have copies
> of their own posts, unless extra care is taken, usually on the part of the
> poster, requiring quite some discipline.  On nginx.org, there is some
> sort of a forum-based mirror and gateway for the mailing lists, perhaps
> that's what DragonFly might be interested in adopting as well, if forum
> availability is a requirement?
>
> Cheers,
> Constantine.
> http://cm.su/
>
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