[CentOS-mirror] A rant

Mon Jan 25 14:36:44 UTC 2016
Dattatec Mirrors <mirrors at dattatec.com>

El Sábado 23/01/2016, Carsten Otto escribió:
> Dear Cent OS mirror admins,
> and also dear admins not related to CentOS,
>
> this mail only regards the mailing list centos-mirror at centos.org and is
> not related to specific mirroring issues. I kindly ask you to read it
> nevertheless.
>
> I'm an administrator of a mirror serving content of more than 50
> projects, CentOS being one of them. As it happens, some things like
> changed IP addresses, firewall issues, DNS changes, and bigger outages
> need to be announced from time to time. Please read this message trying
> to understand my perspective, wanting to serve as many projects with as
> little effort as possible.
>
> For this task, I have at least one contact address for each project. In
> the case of CentOS it is this list. This list only accepts mails from
> subscribers, which I learned the hard way. Based on this I have the
> following suggestions and topics for discussion:
>
> 1) Open the mailing list to allow unsubscribed admins to send. This
> works with almost all of the other projects, and I guess they are
> perfectly fine with it. Try mirrors at debian.org,
> mirror-list-d at redhat.com, mirror-admin at gentoo.org, admin at opensuse.org,
> mirrors at ubuntu.com just to name a few.

I believe this list was open at some point, it was later closed due to spam 
problems, and I actually prefer it like that.

> 2) If you decide against 1), at least INFORM the senders that their
> messages are filtered out. In the past week I thought I was being
> ignored, as I did not receive such mails. This obviously is not a
> feeling you want to nurture in admins supporting your project.

Agreed, but are you sure the bounces weren't being filtered on your side?
(A few minutes ago I sent a mail from a gmail address, still no bounce 
received).

> 3) (As a precaution) Make sure to reply to the original sender, not only
> to the list. I don't want to receive the messages relating to specific
> issues sent by OTHER mirror admins, as this is what I consider spam.
> Those mails are not of any interest to me.

Moot point if the list is closed to susbcribers only.

> 4) Make the "Mail delivery" option default to false. I appreciate that I
> can disable receiving messages from other admins (see 3), but having to
> set this up myself is putting even more work on my shoulders.

Sorry but no, if I subscribe to a mailing list I *expect* to receive mails.
A sepparate announces only mailing list might be an option, but due to the low 
message rate of this list I don't know if it's worth it.

> Thank you,
> Carsten

Regards,
-- 
Ricardo J. Barberis
Senior SysAdmin / IT Architect
DonWeb
La Actitud Es Todo
www.DonWeb.com
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