On maandag 19 september 2022 22:16:10 CEST Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Sun, 2022-09-18 at 11:46 +0200, Reto wrote:
> > > For example, if you have got a virtual search folder with a filter, that
> > > searches the email bodies for "x11" in folders for different mailing
> > > lists, it can be very helpful, if the subject lines mention "[arch-
> > > general] ", "[Alsa-user] ", "[Evolution] ", "[lubuntu-users] " etc. to
> > > get a first overview.
> >
> > Filter on the List-Id: header, that's what it is meant for.
> > Any email that arrives in your inbox from the list, also has the list
> > address on its recipient list, so it's easy enough to filter based on
> > that as well if you don't have a MUA that can read headers.
>
> Hi,
>
> it's Ok, if there are valid reasons to remove the identifier from the
> subject to keep this DKIM thingy intact, but please don't try to explain
> how to filter.
I second the DKIM importance. I was dropped from the Alsa mailing list as my strict mailserver marked most of the mails as rejected as DKIM kept failing and this bounced too hard against the mailserver. Yes I have a big enough spam issue that I keep the setup of my mailserver as I hope eventually all "no such email" will eventually purge my email from the spam lists I don't want to be on.
>
> First of all you hide an important part, by partial quoting:
>
> "For several reasons such an identifier can be useful. For each of those
> reasons somebody probably has got an objection, how to do things
> different, so that the identifier is unneeded. Yes, it's not needed, but
> it's useful/helpful for some people, in some cases, while there's
> unlikely a good reason to be annoyed by "[arch-general] "."
>
> If the filter criteria should be "x11" and an overview is wanted, but
> not a separation by mailing lists, it makes a difference.
> Now you can argue that still the "To" header can provide this overview,
> even without filtering/separating by mailing list and I can argue
> against it, that the subject could show the mailing list + an important
> headline in one and so on...
Just wanted to point out, to those that also read the mailing list, some MUAs or mailservers allow setting up filters that update headers. So in both KMail and Dovecot sieve it would be possible to prepend "[arch-general] " to the To: header based on the List-Id.
>
> If the identifier in the subject is that unneeded and useless and can be
> replaced by something that is meant for something, then why was it used
> for such a long time, by so many mailing lists?
Personally, I think this is due to legacy. And of course there are those with more primitive mail servers (ISP provided ones) that would not handle this sieve stuff. And MUA support depends on which you want to use, I imagine more have this ability but I don't know.
>
> IOW I accept it, if DKIM requires that the identifier must be dropped.
> But please don't pretend that it isn't a loss and using something else
> is anyway better. It is a loss, maybe not for you, but probably for
> other users, it's a loss, too.
>
> Regards,
> Ralf