Mailing List Archive

Test Mailman3 in production
Hello,

tl;dr: https://lists-next.wikimedia.org is running mailman3. Please help us
test the software before we upgrade the real mailing list server.

Kunal and I have been working on deploying the new mailman (version 3) to
replace mailman2 serving https://lists.wikimedia.org and powering all of
our mailing lists.

Mailman2 is a dinosaur that should have gone extinct years ago. Pretty old
user interface (especially for admins and moderators), storing passwords in
plain text, lack of any database (everything is file on disk), pretty old
code, lack of ability to search in archives or send email from web
interface, running on EOL python (python2), encoding issues with non-Latin
languages, hard to redact archives, and the list goes on and on.

The new version has been developed/puppetized/tested in the Cloud and is
now ready for proper testing! Give it a try:
https://lists-next.wikimedia.org. We have created some mailing lists you
can join and can test. If you want to test the experience as a list
administrator/moderator, we can give those permissions out as well.

WARNING: All data on the lists-next server will be deleted after the test
period is over.

We will also need help updating documentation on wikis and elsewhere.

If you find any bugs/issues (yay!), please file a ticket in the
“Wikimedia-Mailing-lists” Phabricator project and we’ll check it out.

In the coming days/weeks will also import some public mailing lists from
the old version to the new version to check archive size, search index
size, and other aspects. There are other TODOs left as well like
monitoring, logging, anti-abuse, etc.

Slowly and after testing (hopefully soon), we expect to deploy this on
lists.wikimedia.org and mailing lists one by one or in batches can be
upgraded to the 21st century.

The overall task tracking this project is T52864
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T52864> and a big thank you people who
are helping this move forward.

Regards,

Kunal and Amir
Re: Test Mailman3 in production [ In reply to ]
Amir Sarabadani <ladsgroup@gmail.com> writes:

> tl;dr: https://lists-next.wikimedia.org is running mailman3. Please help us
> test the software before we upgrade the real mailing list server.

Indeed this is great news. I have subscribed to a couple of mailing
lists that are already using v3. And it really makes it easy to
manage. Thanks for working on this.

One question. I subscribe to this list via the NNTP bridge hosted at
gmane.io. Will the change make any difference at that end? I mean do the
administrators of Gmane require any change?

--
Regards,
Pankaj Jangid


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Re: Test Mailman3 in production [ In reply to ]
Hi,

I've started to play with the interface, but questioning a bit the
instructions given (for clarity purposes) when you're signing up for a list:

Before you can start using GNU Mailman at this site, you must first confirm
> that this is your email address. You can do this by replying to this
> message,
> keeping the Subject header intact.
>

Should there be additional instructions on if something is needed in the
body of that reply email, or that it can be empty and just keep the subject
line the same?

Cheers,

Deb

--

deb tankersley (she/her)

senior program manager, engineering

Wikimedia Foundation



On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 3:40 AM Pankaj Jangid <pankaj@codeisgreat.org>
wrote:

> Amir Sarabadani <ladsgroup@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > tl;dr: https://lists-next.wikimedia.org is running mailman3. Please
> help us
> > test the software before we upgrade the real mailing list server.
>
> Indeed this is great news. I have subscribed to a couple of mailing
> lists that are already using v3. And it really makes it easy to
> manage. Thanks for working on this.
>
> One question. I subscribe to this list via the NNTP bridge hosted at
> gmane.io. Will the change make any difference at that end? I mean do the
> administrators of Gmane require any change?
>
> --
> Regards,
> Pankaj Jangid
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
Re: [Wikimedia-l] Test Mailman3 in production [ In reply to ]
Hi,

On 3/25/21 11:45 PM, Pankaj Jangid wrote:
> One question. I subscribe to this list via the NNTP bridge hosted at
> gmane.io. Will the change make any difference at that end? I mean do the
> administrators of Gmane require any change?

My understanding is that Gmane is subscribed to our mailing lists just
like a normal user. I don't expect anything will change in that area
since all subscriptions will be carried over.

Mailman3 also has plugins for sites like mail-archive.com[1] which I
think are manually configured for now. I haven't looked into the
implications of what enabling such a plugin would be though.

[1]
https://docs.mailman3.org/projects/mailman/en/latest/src/mailman/archiving/docs/common.html#the-mail-archive-com

-- Kunal

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