DIS: Re: BAK: [RWO] List Patch
On Wed, 1 Jan 2020, James Cook wrote: I object to both intents. Sorry to prolong this, but I'm not convinced this gets around Ørjan's objection. Here are two modifications to the gamestate that could be made at 00:15:01 on Dec 14 that would make the first document true: a) Insert two events into the historical record: a-o and a-b become discussion fora. Flip both publicity switches to Discussion. b) Insert four events into the historical record: a-o and a-b became discussion fora, then immediately after, became Public fora again. Both of these involve four changes (either two additions to history plus two changes to Publicity switches, or four additions to history). The first one is what we intend, but I'm not confident that it is the unique minimal modification. *Sigh* I seriously think considering history to be a part of game state may have been a mistake, but apparently there's now precedence for it... Is there anything wrong with passing a proposals that says "Change the gamestate to what it would be if a-b and a-o's publicity had been switched to Discussion at time X and then switched back to Public at time Y, so that none of the intervening messages on either list were sent via a public forum"? Generally, the main problem that I recall (but might not be the only one) is the following provision in Rule 105 (Rule Changes, Power 3): A rule change is wholly prevented from taking effect unless its full text was published, along with an unambiguous and clear specification of the method to be used for changing the rule, at least 4 days and no more than 60 days before it would otherwise take effect. This means that if any Rule changes need to be made to correct the game state, then no mere proposal can emulate ratification in a succinct way unless it is enabled by an even higher-Power/Precedence rule such as Rule 1551 (Ratification, Power 3.1). Alternatively, I wouldn't be averse to just fixing the uncertainties one by one. I don't think there are that many. A few Master switches, some income earned, the state of the PM election, and whether a proposal was distributed. Anything else? Maybe you're right. Greetings, Ørjan.
DIS: [Reporter] Last week in Agora
Archived at https://github.com/AgoraNomic/Reporter/tree/master/weekly_summaries For the week 2019-12-23..29: # Mailing list trouble * omd diagnoses the recent trouble with the mailing list, and tries a couple of ways to fix it. From-address rewriting for all messages has been temporarily enabled. Thread: "[Distributor] list status". (Also previous threads: "test", "test should fail".) * Ørjan says e found earlier this year that the list IP was on a global spam blacklist, and wonders whether the IP is actually being used for spam. Thread: "DIS: test". * Ørjan points out there's no reverse DNS for the mail server, which omd fixes. * Falsifian attempts to a few actions again in case they weren't sent in public messages (becoming a candidate for PM, earning Coins, flipping master switches to Agora). * See also message "DIS: Pinpointing end of list outage (was BUS: Might as well try)". * Aris points out that messages sent during the outage may not have been validly sent via public fora, and calls a CFJ asking whether Proposal 8277 was distributed. Thread: "[Distributor] list status". * Propsals and debate follow from Aris's observation. * Murphy proposes to ratify a document stating that the messages were sent to the Public Forum. This is Propsoal 8278. Thread: "Proposal: Resolve the troubles". * Jason Cobb points out this proposal may not work due to the difference between sending "to" and "via" a public forum. Murphy submits an updated proposal, "Resolve the troubles v1.1". * Aris argues for doing the opposite, and submits a proposal intended to make it so none of the messages count. This is Propsoal 8279. Thread: "Equitable Detroubling". * Ørjan claims both proposals are at risk of doing something different from what we expect, due to the large time difference between the date of ratification and the dates of the events being ratified. Thread: "[Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8277-8279". * Ørjan suggests creating a separate ratifying document for each email message. ais523 suggests instead sending a message to the backup list ratifying that agora-business and agora-official were not public fora. Aris suggests also ratifying that they started being public fora again later. Falsifian suggests sidestepping the issue by directly describing the gamestate modification in the proposal. * Aris announces intent to ratify without objection two documents. The first makes agora-business and agora-official into discussion fora on Dec 14, and the second makes them into public fora on Dec 28. * Alexis argues that this is the wrong approach, since e believes ratification would not change history. Aris responds by citing a thesis by Falsifian which concludes that ratification does change history, as seen by the rules. Thread: "[RWO] List Patch". # Voting * Voting begins on Proposals 8277-8279, except that voting might have already begun on Proposal 8277 when H. Promotor Aris distributed it during the mailing list trouble. * G. attempts to create a paradox using the vote of a zombie (Rance) e might only control if Propsoal 8278 is adopted. ais523 doesn't think it would work; see also Jason Cobb's observation of a wording error in the proposal, and Ørjan's later objection to both Proposals 8277 and 8279. * Murphy attempts to resolve a PM election as uncontested, with Falsifian as the only candidate, leading to some discussion. (The message purporting to initiate the election was sent during the mailing list trouble.) Thread: "BUS: PM Candidacy". # Scams * Gaelan proposes a scam to get around Rule 1030's prohibition on enacting new rules that override it as a means of determining precedence. G. points out a potential problem and Jason Cobb suggests a way to get around it. Thread: "Proposal: precedence scam?". # Miscellaneous * Aris announces a new Agoran MUD in collaboration with Jason Cobb and solicits help building it, and describes how e thinks it might be used. Thread: "[MUD] New Agoran MUD". For some context, see also the November thread "Agoran MOO?". * omd publishes some thoughts on CFJ 3783, which e is assigned to judge. * Aris stands for PM, in case e hasn't already. Thread: "[MUD] New Agoran MUD". * Aris asks for details on an incident e heard of where a person attempted to register twice at the same time under different names. E gets some responses, including a description of the "Annabel crisis". Thread: "Research Question". * H. Arbitor G. calls for more judges. Thread: "[Arbitor] Judge Check". * In response, former player R. Lee re-registers and offers to judge cases, but says e will not otherwise play the game actively. # Events that may not have happened due to mailing list trouble Because a substantial number of players may not have received the
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8277-8279
On 1/1/20 12:47 AM, Gaelan Steele via agora-discussion wrote: > TTtt goddamn PF > > Gaelan NttPF. -- Jason Cobb
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8277-8279
TTtt goddamn PF Gaelan > On Dec 31, 2019, at 9:39 PM, Gaelan Steele via agora-discussion > wrote: > > > >> On Dec 28, 2019, at 3:43 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-official >> wrote: >> >> I hereby distribute each listed proposal, initiating the Agoran >> Decision of whether to adopt it, and removing it from the proposal >> pool. For this decision, the vote collector is the Assessor, the >> quorum is 3, the voting method is AI-majority, and the valid >> options are FOR and AGAINST (PRESENT is also a valid vote, as are >> conditional votes). >> >> ID Author(s)AITitle >> --- >> 8277& G. 1.0 Minor Giveaway > > FOR, I’m always up for weird rules-test proposals (see my recent one) > >> 8278 Murphy 3.0 Resolve the troubles > > PRESENT, because I just got back and scary complicated things are happening > and I’m not qualified to judge > >> 8279 Aris, Murphy 3.0 Equitable Detroubling > > PRESENT > >> >> The proposal pool is currently empty. >> >> Legend: & : Proposal may or may not already have been distributed. >> >> The full text of the aforementioned proposal(s) is included below. >> >> // >> ID: 8277 >> Title: Minor Giveaway >> Adoption index: 1.0 >> Author: G. >> Co-authors: >> >> I transfer 5 coins to each active player, in the order that they >> are listed in the most recent Registrar's Weekly Report. >> >> // >> ID: 8278 >> Title: Resolve the troubles >> Adoption index: 3.0 >> Author: Murphy >> Co-authors: >> >> [The normal standard set by CFJ 1905 is "a message has not been sent via >> a forum until most persons who have arranged to receive messages via >> the forum receive it". This is a sensible place to draw the line, but >> verifying that for a whole set of messages is arguably more trouble >> than it's worth. AFAIK no scams were attempted, apart from a Win by >> Apathy that was already objected to; and even once we verify that a >> message was received by enough people, we still have to keep track of >> which of those messages have or haven't already been verified. >> >> H. Distributor omd advises that the problems started on Dec 14, so this >> includes all messages from the a-o and a-b archives from Dec 13 onward.] >> >> Ratify the following ~~~-delimited document: >> >> ~~~ >> Each of the following messages was effectively sent to the Public Forum >> on or about the Date: stamp shown in the archives. Claims within these >> messages (in particular, claims to perform actions) may still be >> ineffective for other reasons. >> >> Relevant messages from >> https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2019-December/date.html >> >> BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook >> OFF: [Rulekeepor] Short Logical Ruleset Jason Cobb >> BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook >> OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposal 8277 Aris Merchant >> OFF: [Registrar] Agoran Directory James Cook >> OFF: [Registrar] Forbes 500 James Cook >> OFF: [Rulekeepor] Full Logical Ruleset: October 2019 James Cook >> OFF: Round 2, fight! Edward Murphy >> OFF: Fwd: [dicelog] Selection of Comptrollor Edward Murphy >> OFF: [ADoP] Metareport Edward Murphy >> OFF: [Distributor] list status omd >> OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3783 Assigned to omd Kerim Aydin >> OFF: [Registrar] Agoran Directory James Cook >> OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook >> OFF: [Distributor] list status omd >> Fwd: OFF: [Distributor] list status omd >> OFF: [ADoP] Metareport Edward Murphy >> >> Relevant messages from >> https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2019-December/date.html >> >> BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook >> BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook >> BUS: Re: OFF: [Rulekeepor] Short Logical Ruleset Jason Cobb >> BUS: Judgement of CFJs 3780 and 3782 James Cook >> BUS: Judgement of CFJs 3780 and 3782 James Cook >> BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3779 Assigned to Jason Cobb James Cook >> DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3779 Assigned to Jason Cobb James >> Cook >> BUS: End of Zombie lease James Cook >> BUS: Re: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposal 8277 Aris Merchant >> BUS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Forbes 500 James Cook >> BUS: Income James Cook >> BUS: Re: OFF: [Rulekeepor] Short Logical Ruleset James Cook >> BUS: Notice of Honour James Cook >> BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposal 8277 Edward Murphy >> BUS: Resolution of Prime Minister election Edward Murphy >> BUS: Vote on Proposal 8277 James Cook >> BUS: PM Candidacy James Cook >> BUS: Might as well try James Cook >> BUS: Might as well try Jason Cobb >> BUS: Might as well try omd >> BUS: CoE on ADoP report James Cook
Re: DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8277-8279
Gaelan wrote: 8277& G. 1.0 Minor Giveaway FOR, I’m always up for weird rules-test proposals (see my recent one) (etc.) NttPF
DIS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposals 8277-8279
> On Dec 28, 2019, at 3:43 PM, Aris Merchant via agora-official > wrote: > > I hereby distribute each listed proposal, initiating the Agoran > Decision of whether to adopt it, and removing it from the proposal > pool. For this decision, the vote collector is the Assessor, the > quorum is 3, the voting method is AI-majority, and the valid > options are FOR and AGAINST (PRESENT is also a valid vote, as are > conditional votes). > > ID Author(s)AITitle > --- > 8277& G. 1.0 Minor Giveaway FOR, I’m always up for weird rules-test proposals (see my recent one) > 8278 Murphy 3.0 Resolve the troubles PRESENT, because I just got back and scary complicated things are happening and I’m not qualified to judge > 8279 Aris, Murphy 3.0 Equitable Detroubling PRESENT > > The proposal pool is currently empty. > > Legend: & : Proposal may or may not already have been distributed. > > The full text of the aforementioned proposal(s) is included below. > > // > ID: 8277 > Title: Minor Giveaway > Adoption index: 1.0 > Author: G. > Co-authors: > > I transfer 5 coins to each active player, in the order that they > are listed in the most recent Registrar's Weekly Report. > > // > ID: 8278 > Title: Resolve the troubles > Adoption index: 3.0 > Author: Murphy > Co-authors: > > [The normal standard set by CFJ 1905 is "a message has not been sent via > a forum until most persons who have arranged to receive messages via > the forum receive it". This is a sensible place to draw the line, but > verifying that for a whole set of messages is arguably more trouble > than it's worth. AFAIK no scams were attempted, apart from a Win by > Apathy that was already objected to; and even once we verify that a > message was received by enough people, we still have to keep track of > which of those messages have or haven't already been verified. > > H. Distributor omd advises that the problems started on Dec 14, so this > includes all messages from the a-o and a-b archives from Dec 13 onward.] > > Ratify the following ~~~-delimited document: > > ~~~ > Each of the following messages was effectively sent to the Public Forum > on or about the Date: stamp shown in the archives. Claims within these > messages (in particular, claims to perform actions) may still be > ineffective for other reasons. > > Relevant messages from > https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-official/2019-December/date.html > > BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook > OFF: [Rulekeepor] Short Logical Ruleset Jason Cobb > BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook > OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposal 8277 Aris Merchant > OFF: [Registrar] Agoran Directory James Cook > OFF: [Registrar] Forbes 500 James Cook > OFF: [Rulekeepor] Full Logical Ruleset: October 2019 James Cook > OFF: Round 2, fight! Edward Murphy > OFF: Fwd: [dicelog] Selection of Comptrollor Edward Murphy > OFF: [ADoP] Metareport Edward Murphy > OFF: [Distributor] list status omd > OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3783 Assigned to omd Kerim Aydin > OFF: [Registrar] Agoran Directory James Cook > OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook > OFF: [Distributor] list status omd > Fwd: OFF: [Distributor] list status omd > OFF: [ADoP] Metareport Edward Murphy > > Relevant messages from > https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-business/2019-December/date.html > > BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook > BUS: Re: OFF: [Treasuror] Forbes 500 James Cook > BUS: Re: OFF: [Rulekeepor] Short Logical Ruleset Jason Cobb > BUS: Judgement of CFJs 3780 and 3782 James Cook > BUS: Judgement of CFJs 3780 and 3782 James Cook > BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3779 Assigned to Jason Cobb James Cook > DIS: Re: BUS: Re: OFF: [Arbitor] CFJ 3779 Assigned to Jason Cobb James > Cook > BUS: End of Zombie lease James Cook > BUS: Re: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposal 8277 Aris Merchant > BUS: Re: OFF: [Registrar] Forbes 500 James Cook > BUS: Income James Cook > BUS: Re: OFF: [Rulekeepor] Short Logical Ruleset James Cook > BUS: Notice of Honour James Cook > BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposal 8277 Edward Murphy > BUS: Resolution of Prime Minister election Edward Murphy > BUS: Vote on Proposal 8277 James Cook > BUS: PM Candidacy James Cook > BUS: Might as well try James Cook > BUS: Might as well try Jason Cobb > BUS: Might as well try omd > BUS: CoE on ADoP report James Cook > BUS: Notice of Honour James Cook > BUS: Re: OFF: [Distributor] list status Aris Merchant > BUS: Re: OFF: [Promotor] Distribution of Proposal 8277 Jason Cobb > BUS: Favoring Aris Merchant > BUS: CoE on ADoP report
Re: DIS: Pinpointing end of list outage (was BUS: Might as well try)
Thanks for the very informative message! Out of curiosity, is there any reason From munging needs to be off for non-Gmail hosts, specifically Fastmail (who probably shows up in your log as messagingengine.com)? I saw you mention that they bounced messages from the EC2 server, but it’s unclear if any of the original issues apply. Gaelan > On Dec 31, 2019, at 12:15 AM, omd via agora-discussion > wrote: > > On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 2:05 PM James Cook wrote: >> Some data about trying to pinpoint the end of the mailing list outage. >> It looks like it's slightly different per list; I suppose this may >> reflect the dates omd updated the configurations. Dates below are >> according to the archives at mailman.agoranomic.org. > > Here's a not-quite-exact chronology reconstructed from logs: > > - Unknown, but no later than Oct 29, when my logs start: Gmail first > starts returning 421 errors (temporary failure) with "authentication > information" message. At least since Oct 29, all list messages were > delivered on later attempts. > > - Dec 14 23:01 UTC: Gmail first starts returning 550 errors (permanent > failure) with same error message; first affected message is this one: > https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-discussion/2019-December/056000.html > > [During this period, Gmail rejected most deliveries, although it > accepted some. The list could still receive from Gmail and deliver to > other servers.] > > - Around Dec 22 23:21 UTC: Reconfigured qmail on vps.qoid.us (which > hosts the lists) to forward via ec2.qoid.us. > > - Around Dec 23 00:39 UTC: Fixed ec2.qoid.us mail server to use IPv4 > instead of IPv6. Gmail etc. don't like mail coming from IPv6 because > you can't do effective IP bans. > > [During this period, Gmail accepted... most deliveries, albeit delayed > due to rate limits, but it did reject a lot of daily digests, which > some people are subscribed to. Moreover, icloud.com started rejecting > all deliveries; apparently ec2.qoid.us got onto the proofpoint.com > blacklist, a "machine-learning driven content classification system". > Sigh.] > > - Around Dec 24 05:53 UTC: Reconfigured Mailman to send messages > through SMTP directly to ec2.qoid.us rather than going through the > local qmail. This shouldn't affect anything. > > - Around Dec 28 00:33 UTC: Turned on From munging and DKIM signing and > switched back to vps.qoid.us. No mass rejections since then. > > In all cases, the three lists were affected at the same time (except > turning on From munging, which happened a few seconds apart for each > list). > > Unfortunately, since each subscriber gets their own separate delivery > attempt (mostly), there's no clear line between the list working and > not working. The possibility of delayed delivery makes things even > more complicated, as does the interaction with daily digests. I do > think it's a good idea to resolve this via ratification. > > Sorry for the delay in explaining what's going on. I'm with family > for the holidays, and I end up not spending any time on non-family > stuff, even though I have plenty of time. > > The "authentication information" error message in question: > > 550-5.7.26 This message does not have authentication information or fails to > 550-5.7.26 pass authentication checks. To best protect our users from spam, > the > 550-5.7.26 message has been blocked. Please visit > 550-5.7.26 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication for > more > 550 5.7.26 information. t17si15910193pjr.44 - gsmtp > > The message is misleading. Without From munging, list messages do > often fail DKIM authentication checks, because of the DIS/BUS/OFF > prefix added to the subject. But this failure has existed for years > without causing Gmail to reject messages, although it sometimes sent > them to Spam or marked them as suspicious. Moreover, sending the same > messages from ec2.qoid.us worked... or at least didn't fail the same > way. So it seems like Gmail decided to distrust vps.qoid.us's IP > address. I can think of a few possible reasons why: > > - Backscatter: I recently checked the IP address against various spam > blacklists, and while it wasn't on the most common ones, it was on the > backscatterer.org blacklist. This surprised me. Turns out that my > server was vulnerable to a straightforward backscatter attack, where > you send mail to an intentionally invalid recipient, setting the From > address to whoever you want to spam, and the resulting bounce message > is delivered unsolicited to them. The version of qmail I'm using has > a mechanism to reject invalid recipients synchronously within the SMTP > connection, rather than sending a bounce message... but when I first > started running the lists, I had to disable this mechanism due to a > bug. I forgot that I still hadn't fixed that. Oops. > > Since then, I've fixed the bug and re-enabled recipient verification. > As a bonus, I also wrote some
Re: DIS: [MUD] New Agoran MUD
On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 8:55 PM Aris Merchant < thoughtsoflifeandligh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I will refrain from posting the address of the MUD for a few days, > although if anyone wants to, they can probably work it out. There are > two reasons: First, I would like to see who is interested in > contributing before making the MUD public. Second, I will not have > time to spend on this for the next few days. I'm mentioning this now > because I anticipate having some time after the next few days. > Update: Time isn’t an issue anymore, but my main computer is in for repairs till about the end of the week. I’ll still be active in Agora, but I can’t do this (or for instance Promotor reports) comfortably until I get it back. -Aris
Re: DIS: [MUD] New Agoran MUD
On Sat, 28 Dec 2019 at 00:26, Aris Merchant wrote: > On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 11:28 AM James Cook wrote: > > On Mon, 23 Dec 2019 at 04:55, Aris Merchant > > wrote: > > > Alright, everyone, this would seem to be as good a time as any to make > > > the grand announcement, so here goes nothing. Agora has a new MUD. > > > It's almost completely empty at the moment, and the game mechanics are > > > as of yet quite undefined. That being said, it does exist. > > > > Thanks for creating it. I don't know whether I will have much time to > > contribute, but I'm certainly curious about it. What role do you > > expect it to play in the game? Will we create an Agoran subgame that > > delegates its mechanics to the MUD? Is that what happened last time > > Agora had a MUD? > > > I was thinking it might become a discussion forum eventually; I don’t > really see a need for it to have further official status under the rules. I > was mostly hoping that it might serve as a place for Agorans to hang out > and build things together, since we’re too physically disparate for meeting > in person to really work. > > As for specifics, I could see it having exhibits representing specific > aspects of Agoran history, or perhaps spilling over into a more > conventional MUD with quests, combat, and/or crafting. It really depends on > what people are interested in adding; museum style stuff wouldn’t be too > hard, actual game mechanics would require someone to put in the time to > program them. I’ll coordinate and give suggestions, but the most important > concerns are user demand and what people are willing to implement. > > -Aris A casual place to hang out sounds nice. I expect be fairly busy over the next few months, but I might try some simple building if it's not hard to get started. My only experience with MUDs is a couple of visits to LambdaMOO several years ago. I didn't stick around then, but maybe I will this time, since the people will be familiar. -- - Falsifian
Re: DIS: Re: BUS: Proposal: Resolve the troubles
On Tue, Dec 31, 2019 at 4:19 PM omd via agora-discussion wrote: > This should probably say “sent via” instead of “sent to”, to match the > language in R478’s definition of “public message”. After all, the > affected messages were all successfully “sent to” the list in a > literal sense; it’s just that the list was unable to deliver copies to > subscribers. (Whoops, I overlooked the existing discussion thread where Jason Cobb made the same point already.)
DIS: Re: BUS: Proposal: Resolve the troubles
On Sat, Dec 28, 2019 at 3:49 PM Edward Murphy via agora-business wrote: > Each of the following messages was effectively sent to the Public Forum > on or about the Date: stamp shown in the archives. This should probably say “sent via” instead of “sent to”, to match the language in R478’s definition of “public message”. After all, the affected messages were all successfully “sent to” the list in a literal sense; it’s just that the list was unable to deliver copies to subscribers.
Re: DIS: Pinpointing end of list outage (was BUS: Might as well try)
On Fri, Dec 27, 2019 at 2:05 PM James Cook wrote: > Some data about trying to pinpoint the end of the mailing list outage. > It looks like it's slightly different per list; I suppose this may > reflect the dates omd updated the configurations. Dates below are > according to the archives at mailman.agoranomic.org. Here's a not-quite-exact chronology reconstructed from logs: - Unknown, but no later than Oct 29, when my logs start: Gmail first starts returning 421 errors (temporary failure) with "authentication information" message. At least since Oct 29, all list messages were delivered on later attempts. - Dec 14 23:01 UTC: Gmail first starts returning 550 errors (permanent failure) with same error message; first affected message is this one: https://mailman.agoranomic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/private/agora-discussion/2019-December/056000.html [During this period, Gmail rejected most deliveries, although it accepted some. The list could still receive from Gmail and deliver to other servers.] - Around Dec 22 23:21 UTC: Reconfigured qmail on vps.qoid.us (which hosts the lists) to forward via ec2.qoid.us. - Around Dec 23 00:39 UTC: Fixed ec2.qoid.us mail server to use IPv4 instead of IPv6. Gmail etc. don't like mail coming from IPv6 because you can't do effective IP bans. [During this period, Gmail accepted... most deliveries, albeit delayed due to rate limits, but it did reject a lot of daily digests, which some people are subscribed to. Moreover, icloud.com started rejecting all deliveries; apparently ec2.qoid.us got onto the proofpoint.com blacklist, a "machine-learning driven content classification system". Sigh.] - Around Dec 24 05:53 UTC: Reconfigured Mailman to send messages through SMTP directly to ec2.qoid.us rather than going through the local qmail. This shouldn't affect anything. - Around Dec 28 00:33 UTC: Turned on From munging and DKIM signing and switched back to vps.qoid.us. No mass rejections since then. In all cases, the three lists were affected at the same time (except turning on From munging, which happened a few seconds apart for each list). Unfortunately, since each subscriber gets their own separate delivery attempt (mostly), there's no clear line between the list working and not working. The possibility of delayed delivery makes things even more complicated, as does the interaction with daily digests. I do think it's a good idea to resolve this via ratification. Sorry for the delay in explaining what's going on. I'm with family for the holidays, and I end up not spending any time on non-family stuff, even though I have plenty of time. The "authentication information" error message in question: 550-5.7.26 This message does not have authentication information or fails to 550-5.7.26 pass authentication checks. To best protect our users from spam, the 550-5.7.26 message has been blocked. Please visit 550-5.7.26 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication for more 550 5.7.26 information. t17si15910193pjr.44 - gsmtp The message is misleading. Without From munging, list messages do often fail DKIM authentication checks, because of the DIS/BUS/OFF prefix added to the subject. But this failure has existed for years without causing Gmail to reject messages, although it sometimes sent them to Spam or marked them as suspicious. Moreover, sending the same messages from ec2.qoid.us worked... or at least didn't fail the same way. So it seems like Gmail decided to distrust vps.qoid.us's IP address. I can think of a few possible reasons why: - Backscatter: I recently checked the IP address against various spam blacklists, and while it wasn't on the most common ones, it was on the backscatterer.org blacklist. This surprised me. Turns out that my server was vulnerable to a straightforward backscatter attack, where you send mail to an intentionally invalid recipient, setting the From address to whoever you want to spam, and the resulting bounce message is delivered unsolicited to them. The version of qmail I'm using has a mechanism to reject invalid recipients synchronously within the SMTP connection, rather than sending a bounce message... but when I first started running the lists, I had to disable this mechanism due to a bug. I forgot that I still hadn't fixed that. Oops. Since then, I've fixed the bug and re-enabled recipient verification. As a bonus, I also wrote some code to synchronously reject messages to the lists if the sender isn't subscribed to that list. This duplicates an existing check in Mailman, which has always been enabled, but is asynchronous. Originally it was set to reject messages from non-subscribers with an explanatory bounce message, but a long time ago I had to switch it to silently ignoring them, again for fear of backscatter spam. Having messages silently ignored is confusing; now I can return a proper error without risking backscatter. (The error will probably be returned to the sender as a bounce message, but coming from
