Discourse silently discards replies by mail

Coming here from Discourse discards replies by mail (#1014) · Issues · Infrastructure / Infrastructure · GitLab

There is a thread https://discourse.gnome.org/t/evolution-ews-oauth2/ to which I replied on March 06, but the message I sent is not shown in the thread at all. I do not know how many mails I wrote went into void. I hoped I do help people out there, but it seems I do not… :frowning: or discourse does not help people…

Reply there is:

The e-mail was received but was blocked due to RateLimiter::LimitExceeded, not an infrastructure issue per se


The problem is that I do not know I’m blocked (blocked for no good reason, at least in my case), I live in an impression that I do help people…

Semi-related question: is there limited a response by the web page as well?

If Discourse does not reply to tell you that your message has been dropped, that’s a very serious bug. No way is that ever OK.

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One of the (many) things I dislike about Discourse is that threads (or ‘topics’ as they call them) are closed after 14 days. IMHO this is an absurd limitation. In contrast, the Evolution mailing list has archived posts dating back many years. (I don’t know of Discourse also archives posts, or how to find them if it does.)

Interested users may want to subscribe to the more traditional Evolution mailing list (which is not affiliated with Discourse), but please try to avoid cross-posting to both forums:

https://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/evolution-users

The limit is 30 days, not 14.

Feel free to report it upstream.

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Limits are generally tied to your trust level, which is raised the more you interact with the forum—but not via email, because email is mainly meant to be used for notification. For instance, you are still at trust level 1, which is just one rung above a new user. I just raised your trust level to 2.

Once again, though, as I have already told you (and the rest of the Evolution mailing list users): Discourse is a web forum that you can also interact with via email, not a mailing list server with a web UI. If you only ever use email, you get a very degraded user experience with this platform.

If Discourse does not reply to tell you that your message has been
dropped, that’s a very serious bug.

Hi,

as far as I can tell, I did not receive a bounce message from the
Discourse.

No way is that ever OK.

The only reason to not respond is to not feed the spammers, I guess.
Bye,
Milan

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I checked before posting that, and on my system it definitely says “This topic will close 14 days after the last reply”. I’m looking at it right now.

Exactly why I was against the move to Discourse for supporting an email MUA. No need to rehash that argument again, but since my main mode of interaction with the user community is via email, I only ever use Discourse if I need to reply to something.

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Once again, though, as I have already told you (and the rest of the
Evolution mailing list users):

Hi,

right, right, my memory is rusty. I thought the links for how-to-s are
there to let people know how they can setup their account to behave
like mailing list. Even it doesn’t behave like a mailing list.

Discourse is a web forum that you can also interact with via email,
not a mailing list server with a web UI. If you only ever use email,
you get a very degraded user experience with this platform.

I’m sorry, I’m not sure how to decipher it. The quickest translation
for me is: “the system sucks, deal with it”, but I also do not think
it’s it. Discourse is definitely different, that’s okay, but if it
stays in the way of me helping the community, then it’s much harder to
deal with it.

You said I can upstream the problem of silent drops of the emails. I
do not know where it is, neither I can talk for the GNOME community. If
anybody with more power could fill such a report it’ll help. I also do
not know whether I want to create an account at a place which GNOME
picked, even that project degrades services which worked for decades.
Err, that sounds pretty awful, I’m sorry.

Thanks and bye,
Milan

Patrick,
I have tried subscribing to the list on two or three occasions. I get an ‘evolution-users Subscription results’ screen, but I never receive a confirmation EMail. I have tried again this morning.
How can I activate my subscription?

I don’t run the list server though I do moderate the Evolution list (with others). However I’m not aware of any problems with the server. I can only suggest you check that you have the correct URL (it changed about 4 months ago.)

If that doesn’t work for you, mail me, maybe with a screenshot of the response you’re getting, at:

evolution-users-owner@lists.osuosl.org

And I’ll try to look into it.

poc

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Thanks Patrick. That was the URL I tried again this morning. Do you want me to continue the conversation via your private mail (the old evolution mail one ending .ve)? I have a screenshot of the ‘pending authorisation’ type message that it gives.

Steve

We can try that. though no promises of a solution.

The limit is per category; the site feedback category is set to auto-close after 14 days—now bumped to 30. The Applications category is set auto-close topics 1.5 months after the last reply.

It’s still showing 14 days for me on this thread.

Note that I disagree with the existence of time limits on a forum such as this, but that’s a separate discussion.

Discourse sends only one rejection email per day to the same email address. That’s apparently done to prevent loops with bad auto responders.

Maybe in relation with your other topic, about too short emails being rejected, or your trust level limits at the time, multiple emails of yours that day were rejected? You would only have gotten one rejection email even if multiple emails were rejected.

I get it’s frustrating if you’re trying to use Discourse through email. It isn’t GNOME specific and you wouldn’t be talking for GNOME if you would make a suggestion to the Discourse developers for maybe improving how their software handles rejecting emails. What is possible for the developers and what is practical for email users is something best discussed upstream between the developers and users that care for the email interface.

Maybe instead of a 24 hour timeout a counter with some reasonable low limit >1 could be used that resets daily, or maybe in the rejection email it could state you only get one rejection email per day so at least it’s not a surprise.

Hi,
I did not chase for the “how many mails had been lost that that”, but
I’m pretty sure I did not receive any rejection email from Discourse
that day. I can be wrong though, it’s a long time, even my trash does
not contain any rejection mail for the past ~30 days.

Bye,
Milan

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.