Mailing Lists

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Revision as of 16:51, 5 October 2011 by Fell (talk | contribs) (Netiquette: Final thanks or sorry)
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Note: the SSL certificates used for the mailing lists are self-signed and will create a warning through the new certificate security feature built in Firefox 3 (Error code: sec_error_untrusted_issuer). For best results you should add it as an exception, adding the certificate as a trusted certificate. Doing this will prevent passive attacks against you, so someone reading your network traffic wont see what pages you're trying to access.

Mailing List Management

The GnuCash mailing lists are served by a mailman server which allows users to subscribe, unsubsubscribe, and otherwise manage their subscriptions to the various lists available.

If you do not wish to use that web interface, then the specific mailing list requests should not be sent to the lists itself. There are separate lists, which can be reached by appending -request to the list name, e.g. mailto:gnucash-de-request@gnucash.org?subject=unsubscribe.

Netiquette

Beneath the usual Netiquette you should obey the following:

  • Use plain text instead of html formated in your email client - html parts will be eaten by the mail server to reduce spam.
  • Use the reply to the list or reply to all button of your email client instead of reply (to the sender) - others could also be interested in the theme and probably help.
  • A final Thanks, that solved my problem. or Sorry, I'm giving up. would be fine. It would help other users, searching the archives, to decide to follow the instructions or not.

Support

The Gnucash team, together with experienced users, will answer your questions about the use of Gnucash on gnucash-user and the other mailing lists listed below:

Development

The following mailing lists are intended for discussion of the ongoing development of Gnucash, including submitting patches, helping with testing, or discussing future development directions. These lists should not be used for asking questions about the use of Gnucash. Questions of that nature should be submitted to gnucash-user or one of the other mailing lists mentioned in the 'Support' section above.

Mailing List Archives

You can also jump to specific archives for some of the lists:

For other lists, you can go to the mailman server and select the list you want to see.

Searching the List Archives

We also provide a mechanism to search the mailing list archives. You should really search the archives before asking a question. Alternatively, you can use the term "site:lists.gnucash.org" to Google or Yahoo! to search within the archives, e.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alists.gnucash.org+encrypt+the+file .

You should also look in the FAQ to see if your question has been asked and answered before.

Spam Prevention

The GnuCash mailing list server runs a number of tests to reduce the amount of spam collected in the mailman queues. In addition to the normal content filters and DNS Blacklists, the server also uses a sender verification method and greylisting to make sure the email is originating from a legitimate email account. Unfortunately this can affect your ability to send to the list if you're using one of the major email companies and THEY don't follow the rules.

For example, if you get a bounce back saying something like:

... while talking to lists.gnucash.org.:
>>> DATA
<<< 550 5.7.1 <gnucash-user@gnucash.org>... sender <me@my.domain> via [10.20.30.40] to <gnucash-user@gnucash.org> rejected, too many recent retries
550 5.1.1 <gnucash-user@gnucash.org>... User unknown
<<< 503 5.0.0 Need RCPT (recipient)

This means your email provider failed the sender verification tests (i.e., it accepts mail to ANY address), and then when it was greylisted it re-transmitted the message too many times (more than three) in the spam-detection window (five minutes). Once this happens, you're blacklisted from the list. Unfortunately there's nothing you can do but wait until the blacklist entry times out (about one week). You might want to complain to your email provider, or you could change to a provider that's more friendly, or just use a different email address.

There is no manual way to reset the blacklist, so please don't ask. We apologize for your inconvenience, but rarely does this affect real users. If you get hit by this, we're sorry, but this is a problem from your provider's end and we cannot correct it on our end.