I’ve had “Mailing List mode” activated on this forum for a few months now. It seems to me that I don’t always receive the posts for threads I create.
Let’s see if I receive the posts in this thread.
this is only a test 
I like salmon.
But only when there are at least 20 characters.
As I stated elsewhere, all @metabrainz.org addresses use GMail, and GMail has a limit on how much mail it will allow sending… and obviously the forum generates a lot of mail. You should receive all the mail, but it will sometimes be quite delayed, as the forum will retry sending the mails for days. (I don’t know if it will eventually drop sending the mail entirely, or if it will continue trying until success.)
Other than changing mail provider, there’s not much we can do just yet. And changing mail provider isn’t happening until after we’re done with the move to NewHost at the earliest - and probably not for some time then.
My only suggestion is to disable mails you don’t need (e.g., if you’re like me and check the forum daily or more-than-daily, just disable mails altogether). Every mail that isn’t getting sent, means that another mail will get sent.
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Okay, pretty sure I never received Freso’s response. Did receive the responses from CallerNo6 and jesus2099, however.
And, yeah, I don’t check the forum regularly – that’s why I’m looking forward to a fully-functioning mailing-list-style interfaces – I just noticed Freso’s response today for the first time.
As I stated elsewhere, all @metabrainz.org addresses use GMail, and GMail has a limit on how much mail it will allow sending… and obviously the forum generates a lot of mail. You should receive all the mail, but it will
Interesting, I never would have guessed (even if I had read Freso’s “stated elsewhere”) that the forum or its mailing list interface would be part of “all @metabrainz.org addresses” – I wouldn’t think it has/needs a “mailbox” in the sense that a regular email address does.
I can’t find the “stated elsewhere” thread that Freso is referring to, so I’m not sure what detail it provides, but I’d be interested in a more detailed/technical explanation of this – is it just that all the messages from the mailing-list interface are relayed through GMail’s SMTP servers? Is it just as simple as finding a new SMTP provider? Or does it depend on some other services provided by GMail/google?
Finally, (besides the obvious – contribute money/code) is there anything I could be doing to help this along – say, create a bug report/vote for an already-existing bug report?
[quote=“bsammon, post:5, topic:169224”]
pretty sure I never received Freso’s response[/quote]
I guess it does drop mails once they’ve failed for long/too many times. 
[quote=“bsammon, post:5, topic:169224”]
I wouldn’t think it has/needs a “mailbox” in the sense that a regular email address does.[/quote]
It needs somewhere to receive mail being sent to it.
AFAIK/AFAICT, it should be “just as simple as finding a new SMTP provider”. We could still use GMail for IMAP/POP3 for checking for mails being sent to the forum, but I don’t see that that would require us to also use their SMTP.
You could spend 100$ (from the 5’000$) back to Google and pay them for an unlimited SMTP access 
Or maybe just ask them to increase the limit for you?
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[quote=“bsammon, post:5, topic:169224”]
I wouldn’t think it has/needs a “mailbox” in the sense that a regular
email address does.[/quote]It needs somewhere to receive mail being sent to it.
Whaddaya know! Reply-via-email actually works! (this message sent via email)
So, as I understand it, the way mailing list software usually works is that it comes with (or is) a daemon that runs on a computer (or VM) controlled/managed by the mailing-list owner (in this case Metabrainz) and the daemon speaks SMTP for sending outgoing messages and listening for incoming messages. In this system, there’s no need for a outside mail service like GMail.
Is it the case that Discourse doesn’t support that way of doing things, or is it that the Metabrainz team didn’t set it up that way?
Current status: I didn’t receive an email copy of post 5 in this thread (my first post this month), but I’ve been receiving email copy of all/most later posts, including some of mine.
Twenty years ago, this would have been right. But today, in a world plagued by spammers, having your own mail server no longer works particularly well: recipients are wary to accept any mail from lesser-known hosts, and you are very likely to land on a blacklist or two occasionally.
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Hi @bsammon, have you already checked the official discourse forums about mailing list?
https://meta.discourse.org/search?q=mailing%20list some topics that might interest you:
I don’t know if there is a topic that applies to your case, though.
We are far from GMail G Suite limits for now, so this isn’t the issue.
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Twenty years ago, this would have been right. But today, in a world plagued by spammers, having your own mail server no longer works particularly well: recipients are wary to accept any mail from lesser-known hosts, and you are very likely to land on a blacklist or two occasionally.
[/quote]
Well, in this case, it appears that the cure may be worse than the disease. A “mailing list mode” that can’t be counted on to send every message is arguably worse than not having one at all.
I’m subscribed to a few dozen mailing lists, and even these days, I’m pretty sure that none(/very few) of them are relaying their messages through a third party. I’d be interested to hear from any metabrainz historians about how things were (what? three years ago?) with the musicbrainz mailing lists.
Another point to consider: I think it’s reasonable to assume that the vast majority of “mailing list mode” users would be people who are using/familiar with other mailing lists, and either know how to work around the “anti-spam” issue, or are using email providers that don’t have the issue (as I am)
Here’s a link to what Gnu Mailman (seems to be the most popular mailing-list software these days) website has about the issue.
By the way, is anyone else having this problem? Is it just me?
Nah, I run my own mail server, and it still works fine. Though it takes a fair bit of work and knowledge to get it working. I can certainly see not wanting do to that, though! MB’s employees and volunteers are surely already too busy as is.