[Mageia-i18n] Mailling list

[Michael Scherer]

Hi,

so first, sorry if we did make people wait for a long time about ml. We
should have been slightly better organized on that. 

So basically, here is how the ml system work :

We have setup a unified login ( as this was something asked by people in
the mandriva days ), which in practice mean we have a web software for
people to register on almost all services we have deployed ( be it
bugzilla, sympa, transifex, etc ). 

The software is catdap, and is running on http://identity.mageia.org/ .
You may have already subscribed for others things ( and also translated
it, even if I totally forgot that part and so have forgot to push some
changes ).

It is still quite rough ( in term of UI ), and we wanted to enhance it
before saying to the world it is ready. But the lack of time ( or rather
the sheer amount of work ) prevented us from doing so, and so the ml
waited too long because of that. The software is working fine however,
that's why i think people would prefer to have working ml and a
imperfect web software than waiting without nothing.

So the mls themselves are on
https://ml.mageia.org/wwsympa-wrapper.fcgi/lists/i18n . The software is
sympa 6.1, without much templating ( the webteam will likely welcome all
help on that regard ).


So let's take for example the fictional ml i18n-qya at ml.mageia.org, which
is dedicated in translating to quenya, and see how we can use it :


How to receive mail from the ml
--------------------------------

You need to have a account on our ldap directory, and for that, you need
to go on http://identity.mageia.org/register . Firefox will likely warn
you about the certificate ( self signed ), we have planned to buy one
soon, but for now, just say that "you understand the risk", etc etc.

You can fill the form ( everything is mandatory so far, but I think we
didn't really discussed much about this, so if you think this is too
intrusive, do not hesitate to let us know ), register, and then wait for
a email. ( of course, we will not sell your email or do anything with
it, and we have taken lots of measures to protect the privacy of
users ).

Once you received the email, click on the link, and that's it, you
should have a account on our system. That's the first part.

The second part is to subscribe to the ml. For this, you need to go on
https://ml.mageia.org/ Same message about ssl certs and firefox.

Here, you can use either the mail you used to register, or the login in
the corner top / right. Beware that changing email is not supported on
sympa at the moment, so I recommend to not change it for now ( and there
is no easy fix, so we will have to do something ugly ). 

Once logged, you can go on
https://ml.mageia.org/wwsympa-wrapper.fcgi/info/i18n-qya and click on
"subscribe" on the left menu.

And that's it, you should receive mail. Almost all ml are public, so you
can read archives.


How to post on the ml 
---------------------

You have 2 choices. Technically, 3 in fact.

The first one is just to send a email to the ml
( i18n-qya at ml.mageia.org ), as usual,  with the email you used for
subscribing. This should go fine, maybe not directly du to various smtp
anti spam measure, but there is nothing special.

The 2nd one is to use the web interface. In the menu, there is a entry
"post" that can be used to send a email, on
https://ml.mageia.org/wwsympa-wrapper.fcgi/info/i18n-qya


The 3rd one is to send a email using a address that is not subscribed.
The email will queued, and wait for a moderator to let it pass. That's
were thing start to go bad. For now, the ml_moderation team is 0 person
( ie, technically, there is just me because someone had to be inside to
be used ). And while it is planned to recruit people ( there is a
category on the wiki ), we didn't start the work on that. 

So while we will do something to enhance this situation ( ie, recruit
and explain the work to do to moderators ), this will wait a little. If
your email do not appear on the ml after a few days, please check with a
admin. 


How to recover my password
--------------------------

So if you lost your password, there is 2 possibility. Either you have a
simple account, and it is doable by the web ( currently only in the
devel version of the web interface
( http://identity-trunk.mageia.org/ )). Or you have a privileged
account, ie svn access, etc, and then you have to ask to a admin ( on
irc, or on the ml ) for security reasons. Of course, we will
revise/enhance this policy if the need arise ( but for now, it was
faster to protect the account ).

If you can do it by the web, a new link to change the password will be
sent by mail. In case of problem, do not hesitate to contact the admins.


How to unsubscribe from a ml
----------------------------

So if one day you think there is too much mail and want to unsubscribe
from a list, just connect on the web interface, and you will be able to
unsubscribe from the left menu 


There is something weird and it don't look good 
-----------------------------------------------

In case of problem, do not hesitate to ask sysadmin ( or call the
ghostbusters ). If you think that you have access to settings that you
should not have, maybe I screwed in the configuration. If you see the
web interface of ml changed ( happened 2 times, didn't search the root
cause ), try to get in touch with us so we can fix it for good ( or just
do the rapid way of restarting apache/sympa ).


Can the interface be translated to my language ?
------------------------------------------------

Yes, it can, for some value of "my language". For now, we just enabled
en and fr, but if there is demand for others, we can see if this is
translated or not. If this cannot be, you will have to see with
sympa.org upstream to push the translation there, and we will be able to
get them once we upgrade to sympa ( ie, like 6 months to 1 year alter )
This is potentially frustrating, we know.

What about gmane/etc ?
----------------------

That's indeed a issue. I was hoping that no one will ask the question :)

So far, we didn't found how to integrate this with our sympa/ldap setup.
I do have some ideas ( ie, fiddling with authentication to let only
gmane subscribe ) but this will some careful testing.  I also considered
running inn directly on our server, but some friend discouraged me from
doing so for my own sanity :)

While it doesn't replace much, people can read the ml using rss.

Is there limitation in term of content, spam etc ?
---------------------------------------------------

Yes, there is likely a limit to the size of message, though I do not
remind where it is set ( nor the limit ). Of course, if this is a
problem, we can increase it ( once we find where it is set... ). We do
also have a spam filter, and greylisting so your mail may be late ( and
queued ). The smtp part still requires some love ( like deploying a 2nd
MX, etc ), so while we have a working setup, it can be enhanced. Again,
do not hesitate to contact sysadmin if you have questions.

How do I ask for a ml ?
-----------------------

Ask to the team leader, aka Wobo, or his second, aka Oliver. He will
forward it to sysadmin. He already has a list of ml to create that will
try to be created shortly. 

-- 
Michael Scherer