5 ms·

Ask HN: How to run an old-school mailing list?

• donaldcuckman 3y ago
  https://www.freelists.org/ https://www.freelists.org/
• 082349872349872 3y ago
  Looks like most of the ones I'm on use mailman.
• igor47 3y ago
  i run several mailing lists for my community. it's a pain. of all my self-hosted projects, mailman 3 gives me the most ongoing trouble. it's a very complicated piece of software and it's running in an increasingly hostile internet. i literally just spent an entire day finally setting up ARC and learning arcane things about how DMARC and SPF validation will still fail when you've ARC-signed your mailing list messages, but it's okay because lots of providers (really, gmail) will give you "points" for the ARC signing, but also you still should enable conditional DMARC mitigations in case the sending domain has a very restrictive DMARC policy, at which point mailman 3 will munge your From headers making list replies get all janky and confusing for all your non-technical participants. i don't want to be on a mailing list for a bunch of random unrelated people who don't know each other and have no reason to be civil to each other. mailing lists for shared projects make sense, and mailing lists for people who otherwise are somehow engaged in community. a mailing list for random people sharing cool ideas honestly sounds it will either totally die, or will first become really controversial and THEN totally die. even in my social circle, some of the mailing lists i ran were torn apart by politics and people splintered off to start their own mailing lists without the people with "problematic" opinions, only to learn that the "problematic" opinions were what fueled the whole shebang.
  • sph 3y ago
    Thank you for your perspective and sorry for the silly question: can't stupid people be booted from a mailing list? I assume well-intentioned spammers to get around any ban, but I imagine an invite-only mailing list can be told to drop everything sent or received from a particular email, no? My naive hope is that a mailing list with 10 strangers will not devolve into utter chaos immediately. It might fade into irrelevance, sure, but that is just how entropy works.
    • igor47 3y ago
      yes, a community can be cultivated. it's okay okay if it's just a moment in time and is meaningful for some and then people move on, it's also okay/wonderful if it takes off and becomes a haven of sanity and togetherness. i'm sorry if i came off as too jaded, i don't mean to dissuade you from trying, and i'm glad you're thinking about it! feel free to ping me if you want more technical tips, or if you want to use my mailman instance instead of trying to shave that particular hairy yak.
      • sph 3y ago
        Maybe if you have an easily-accessible list of best practices to run mailman, I'd love to know. I won't lie to you, hearing you talk about DMARC and SPF makes my hair raise already, I hate dealing with SMTP, and I hoped it would be possible to set Mailman up leveraging third-party platforms (i.e. Postmark, Mailgun, etc.) so I wouldn't have to deal with that nonsense.
    • pavel_lishin 3y ago
      > can't stupid people be booted from a mailing list? Of course. If you're the BOFH of the whole thing, you don't even need to get anyone else's approval. But if you do want the community to weigh in on who's "stupid" and who's not, then suddenly you might discover that three out of your ten members actually think that the person in question is a genius and is holding the whole thing together. Four members might think that booting anyone out at all runs counter to the purpose of your mailing list. Two people will privately email you and the "stupid" person, trying to somehow play both sides for no reason you can comprehend. One person will say that if anyone gets kicked out, they'll leave two. And all those numbers may overlap! Moderation is hard.
• andrewstuart 3y ago
  Set up a Google group. They’re free mailing lists.
  • sph 3y ago
    I'd rather not depend on Google and their UX is terrible, but it's a good shout nonetheless.
  • throw0101c 3y ago
    > Set up a Google group. Is it actually possible to sign up with a non-Gmail account? Because I've tried on a couple of lists, and it never seems to work.
    • Sprocklem 3y ago
      I have successfully signed up to a google group with a non-gmail account, although I had some difficulty finding the instructions for doing so.
  • b800h 3y ago
    This reinforces their control of internet standards, and they're not free, you're paying with your data.
• lathiat 3y ago
  Mailman is most common, however discourse also has a mailing list mode which allows people to get involved and reply by both email and web. Your biggest hurdle will be email deliverability.
• perlgeek 3y ago
  My experiences, though a few years old, boil down to this: * Spam isn't really a problem if you only allow members to send mails to the list * Moderation effort really depends on the size. If you have 10 or maybe 20 well-behaving members, no moderation effort at all. If you 2k people getting into vim-vs-emacs flamewars, good luck...
• bkummel 3y ago
  Don't. There are more modern and superior solutions like e.g. Discourse. I don't see why people should use old-fashioned things like mailing lists in 2024.
  • gadflyinyoureye 3y ago
    Is Discourse easily searchable from the outside? I was looking up transaction behavior in Postgrsql last night. I came across such an old school mailing list. The utility was that it appeared rather high in the search results.
    • bkummel 3y ago
      In my experience, Discourse forums do appear high in search results as well. The added benefit is that they have a good UI to read old threads, unlike mailing lists.
    • hprotagonist 3y ago
      discuss.python.org comes up in my search results, sure.
    • donalhunt 3y ago
      The OpenStreetMap community decided to go the discourse route after a review of requirements and options available. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Community_forum https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Community_forum Talk about discourse for OpenStreetMap: https://www.youtube.com/live/VkZJd-4C1Ws https://www.youtube.com/live/VkZJd-4C1Ws
  • ajb 3y ago
    Reminder: 'modern' and 'old-fashioned' are political epithets, not measurable quantites.
  • gkbrk 3y ago
    Discourse has terrible UX compared to other online forums and even mailing lists. Your claim that it's superior needs to clarify exactly what is superior about it.
• dano 3y ago
  I'm on a list or two that are run through https://groups.io/ https://groups.io/ and it works well. I also run a few private mailing lists on mailman and am loath to ever apply patches to that machine - it is complicated to set up, but works fine once done. In a greenfield implementation a docker installation might be better https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/install/docker.html https://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/install/docker.html
  • sciurus 3y ago
    Seconding https://groups.io/ https://groups.io/ I'm in a number of amateur radio and computing groups there, and it works well. From the creator: "I’ve started three companies. I started ONElist, an email groups service, in 1997, and it was acquired by Yahoo in 2000 (where it was renamed Yahoo Groups). I started Bloglines, an online RSS aggregator before Google Reader was a thing, in 2003, and it was acquired by Ask Jeeves in 2005. I started Groups.io, an email groups service, in 2014, and I still run it." - https://www.wingedpig.com/about/ https://www.wingedpig.com/about/
    • sph 3y ago
      groups.io looks good. But are they all public lists? Is there an option to have a private one?
      • _kb 3y ago
        Private is supported too.
• time4tea 3y ago
  I used mailmanlists.net for a few years and it worked very well. (No association)
• t312227 3y ago
  hello, fwiw ... personally i still use GNU mailman - but version 2, not the more current version 3. why!? idk, version 3 seems unnecessary "bloated" in comparison to the older and "somewhat" easier-to-use version 2. but for a new setup, i would definitely go for example with mlmmj - i'm even considering migration to it from my aging mailman2 setup :)) * http://mlmmj.org/ http://mlmmj.org/ [disclaimer: i've used djbs ezmlm back in the days ... and i'm still a big fan of his software / approach to software. but over the years keeping it running / maintaining it was a bit annoying, so i switched * https://cr.yp.to/ezmlm.html https://cr.yp.to/ezmlm.html :] just my 0.02€
  • quesera 3y ago
    Thanks for the link to mlmmj ! I agree that ezmlm was the high point of mailing list software. :) mlmmj looks like a properly-conceived modern option to consider though!
  • b112 3y ago
    https://github.com/jaredmauch/mailman2-python3 https://github.com/jaredmauch/mailman2-python3 Haven't tried it yet.
  • ale42 3y ago
    I'm working with mlmmj since a few years and am happy with it. Some functions that edit headers (like prepending a text in the subject) should not be used in environments where users can have mailboxes everywhere (not just on your local domain) because it invalidates DKIM signatures...
• w4rh4wk5 3y ago
  Semi-related question: Is mailman still storing passwords in plain text? I remember a time, not that long ago, where I regularly got mails from mailman telling me my current password. Of course, people should never reuse their passwords anywhere, but people still do. Back then I looked into the topic and getting mailman to encrypt passwords wasn't simply changing a setting.
• cageface 3y ago
  I struggled with a few different solutions for this and finally just settled on an alias on my existing fastmail account under my custom domain. Works fine and zero hassle. I think it's fine for the kind of mailing lists you describe.
• defanor 3y ago
  I do not manage a mailing list, since the one I have set is not active, but I found Mailman 3 to be too resource-hungry, so went with much more lightweight mlmmj for mailing list management, and MHonArc for archiving. At least the initial setup is fairly easy with those, once you have postfix set. Probably not hard to set them with Exim, either, while Courier apparently includes mailing list functionality out of the box (though I have not tried that).
• Jhsto 3y ago
  If you want to roll your own there is a mail client I have been using called himalaya which exposes JSON endpoint for mail stuff. It could be used to write a mailing list feature.
• liveoneggs 3y ago
  The purpose of the mailing list software is managing subscriptions, etc. For a small and semi-private list like you are describing a simple alias/.forward is easier to maintain.
  • b112 3y ago
    These days, due to SPF and DKIM, an email from MTA mail.a.com, being forwarded by MTA mail.b.com will almost certainly result in bounce at best. So you cannot easily have a mailing list, where 5 friends can email list@b.com, and each receives a copy. It'll just bounce. And worse, you'll get downgraded at the big boys, and then your other mail will bounce too.
• quesera 3y ago
  One very simple option is Google Groups. But to your questions: It is not hard to run a mailing list, if you know how to run a mail server, and are familiar with text based config files. Running the mail server and sorting out DKIM SPF DMARC will probably take some research. Dealing with RBLs etc is annoying but can be accomplished if you're on a netblock with a good history. You probably are not though. Spam is not an issue, if your membership is invited, approved, or moderated. Mailman is "fine". Set it up once and it works forever. Getting it set up is a fair bit of work, the first time. Mailing lists end up being fairly complicated things, and -- at least as of the last list I ran on Mailman -- these things are not optimized for operator experience. For a very small and manually curated membership, you could just use an alias on your mail server. Mailing list software just automates sub/unsub actions, digest, archives, etc. You might not need any of that. These options are either fun projects, or they are headaches, depending on your goals. If the latter, it's infinitely easier to set up Google Groups. When I shut down the last mailing lists on my servers, most of them transitioned to GG and there have been no complaints from the new operators (who were neophytes). All the usual caveats about Google apply of course. Most people don't care.
  • uncertainrhymes 3y ago
    I work with SPF and DMARC, and still learned things from this recent post on HN. https://simonandrews.ca/articles/how-to-set-up-spf-dkim-dmarc https://simonandrews.ca/articles/how-to-set-up-spf-dkim-dmar... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39712634 It honestly isn't that bad, but it falls into that kind of thing you do once a year and then forget in between. Don't let that stuff discourage you, you'll have much bigger problems with humanity on a mailing list unless you commit to really keeping on top of the community.
• greggyb 3y ago
  For a hosted option, source hut includes mailing lists as a feature a la carte.
• adr1an 3y ago
  What about self-hosting? There's listmonk.app
  • sph 3y ago
    That's for newsletter, not old-school mailing lists. (The marketers stole our name, what the heck should we call them now?)
    • toast0 3y ago
      Frankly, mailing lists were in existance prior to email or computer data processing, as in mailing publications/advertisements/pricelists to a list of subscribers/victims. We stole their term, and they're stealing it back. Seems fair. I don't have an OED subscription, but in the free fact sheet, they note "OED's earliest evidence for mailing list is from 1898, in Overland Monthly." https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mailing-list_n?tab=factsheet https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mailing-list_n?tab=factsheet
    • adr1an 3y ago
      And why would they say "for newsletters AND MAILING LISTS" in their 1-sentence description? You can file a bug report if it's not a mailing list at all.
• zakki 3y ago
  I was using qmail and ezmail mail list management. It was years ago an feel easy. I don't know current state though.
• narag 3y ago
  I've run one small list, a few hundreds subscribers, a long time ago. I used a now defunct service based on free software... mailman? I can't remember. One idea: see what popular open source projects are using. I wouldn't self-host it, mail is a PITA to configure. Much better to use some service. Technically it's very easy. Some lessons learned: - Configure it so when someone replies to a message, it's sent by default to the list. Some think it's better to reply to the person that sent the message you're responding to, but that's terrible: a lot of messages get sent privately when that wasn't the intention. - Resist to the temptation of moderation. You'll become a slave. - No messages accepted except from subscribers. - If at all possible, avoid automatic subscription. Force people to write to you and acknowledge that there's a person maintaining the list and that there are rules. Write down the rules, publish them and sent them in a private message to every new subscriber. - Have a web page for the list, bonus points for a private file-exchange space. The worst part is people. Some of them are a piece of work. If a few dozens are reunited, you're guarranteed to have some guy that doesn't want to be your friend. As soon as you notice someone is overly confrontational with you, just drop the conversation with a closing "maybe you're right, there are several ways to look at it" and limit yourself to a referee role. If the discussion of this person with others gets too hot, then have some rule to stop it. The silent majority wants a calm conversation, so be confident that they will support you.
• yunesj 3y ago
  A lot of communities use Discourse (https://discourse.org https://discourse.org). LPSF (https://forum.lpsf.org https://forum.lpsf.org) migrated to it when Yahoo Groups was discontinued. Some of the advantages are that it's open source, self-hostable, and can be configured to work as both a traditional mailing list and modern forum.
• hkhanna 3y ago
  I've spent a lot of time looking into this for non-profits I am involved in. Currently, I use Mailgun's Mailing List feature which is pretty good, but has a few warts and doesn't really seem to be in active development. But I have half a mind to develop a Django-based system specifically for non-profit member management, build a postgres view on top of the Django tables and and have a postfix mail server reference that postgres view for mailing list delivery. I would use Mailgun or another SMTP relay to minimize deliverability issues.
• crotchfire 3y ago
  You definitely want to use public-inbox: https://public-inbox.org/README.html https://public-inbox.org/README.html It's the same software used by the official Linux Kernel Mailing Lists: https://lore.kernel.org/ https://lore.kernel.org/ - It lets people `git clone` the archives and then `git pull` from them incrementally, so you get the same "distributed backups" that git provides. - It also provides high-quality (Xapian) fulltext search, RSS/Atom, and NNTP access. - It doesn't artificially fracture mailing list threads at month boundaries. I know this sounds like a trivial feature, but I'm constantly astonished that most other mailing list archive software does this. It's so irritating. - Most important of all, it provides a smooth migration path away from SMTP-push for mailing lists, which has always been the big headache. Most of the problems with email go away when you switch from push to incremental-pull. Unsurprisingly, git is the perfect tool for doing incremental pull.
  • zzo38computer 3y ago
    I think it might be better if they allow posting on NNTP as well as only reading. (An account could be required if that is really necessary.) Other than that, it look like good to me.
• epilys 3y ago
  I've been writing a new mailing lists manager on and off over the years. Deliverability and failure tolerance and recovery scare me a lot regarding mailing lists. My project is by no means ready for production but people interested to contribute are always welcome: https://github.com/meli/mailpot https://github.com/meli/mailpot Dogfooded mailing lists and archives: https://lists.meli-email.org/ https://lists.meli-email.org/
• asdfasvea 3y ago
  You kids today and your new fangled 'old school' references. As someone born before the cola wars, the title of this thread was very misleading.
• Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
  I did some research on the topic and focused on minimizing the cost per member (we are only a group of 5), simple UI, and having a searchable archive for all emails and having all the attachments indexed in an archive. I settled on https://gaggle.email/ https://gaggle.email/ It is not the most fully featured, there is one that allowed to tag discussions that seemed very appealing, but out of budget. The other ones I found are: - https://www.emaildodo.com/ https://www.emaildodo.com/ - https://mail-list.com/ https://mail-list.com/ - https://www.simplelists.com/ https://www.simplelists.com/ - https://groups.io/ https://groups.io/ I opted out of self hosting for this because i don't want to deal with emails myself
• bhag2066 3y ago
  Could you start a WhatsApp Group or use the (newish?) Communities feature?
• apple4ever 3y ago
  Look into TopicBox from Fastmail