In reviewing the administrative settings, I see signs that someone might have powerfully annoyed BALUG admins, and I'm curious if anyone remembers the history.
This guy's name is first name Rick, second name that I'm writing with spaces inserted so he won't find this discussion if ego-searching his own name: 'De Gae tano'. (Remove the space characters.) His e-mail address is or was rickde gae tano@yahoo.com. (Remove spaces. Same reason.)
What I'm talking about is: 'rickde gae tano@yahoo.com' is the sole address listed as banned from subscribing to balug-admin, and also the sole address whose postings will be held for moderation on balug-admin. I removed the first ban, but am keeping the 'hold for moderation' one while asking if anyone remembers what this is about.
Mailman ban & moderation rosters, in my experience, accumulate some entries by accident, or by overquick admin action. It's useful to prune them occasionally.
balug-talk has seven addresses banned from membership for what seem like antispam reasons. I'm going to remove those; I doubt they're useful:
fred@ugramail.ru info@t-shirts.com.hk loryta11@yahoo.com sayarei111@yahoo.fr shiori_f851@yahoo.com.ar zonal_info1@yahoo.co.uk zonal_info@yahoo.co.uk
(Gone.)
Also on balug-talk, Rick D.'s address is the sole address whose postings would be held for moderation. I'm leaving that while waiting to hear why.
Basically, was Rick D. some sort of epic pain? What kinda pain? I'm really curious. (Tell me offlist if that's useful.)
There's an IT consultant in Burlingame of that name.
Other than those atypical settings themselves, I've found no reason for them to be there. In my checking, here's what I found - and what just wasn't there to be found:
Well ...
nothing that I recall ... but wetware uses rather lossy compression ...
Searching 'da Interwebs - with demangling of said last name and balug - some search hit results, but nothing seeming of particular relevance.
Doing a rather thorough search on the filesystems on the one host that may have relevant data (has lots of BALUG archive stuff - including list stuff that's no longer on The Internet) ... overly broad search, excess privilege [8-O] ... but human time efficient and can thin out what's not relevant ... and ... # find /usr /var /home -xdev -type f ! -size 0 -exec fgrep -li [REDACTED] {} ; /var/lib/dokuwiki/acl/users.auth.php.BAK/rosters/BALUG-Announce.membership_2015-01-06 /home/balug/e-mail_lists/balug-talk/membership/RCS/membership,v /home/balug/e-mail_lists/balug-talk/membership/membership /home/balug/e-mail_lists/balug-announce/membership/RCS/membership,v /home/balug/e-mail_lists/balug-announce/membership/membership # So ... /var/lib/dokuwiki/acl/users.auth.php.BAK/rosters/BALUG-Announce.membership_2015-01-06 is fairly uninteresting - looks like old copy of roster - and mostly redundant with the other file hits. And checking the others ... I see said email address as having subscribed to the balug-announce list sometime between approximately 2008-01-02T17:22:14-0800 and 2008-02-08T06:18:41-0800 and having been on the list ever since (at least based on the approximately monthly roster backup copies I have). As for the balug-talk list, I show said email address as always having been subscribed - again that's based on approximately monthly backups, and that data goes back to ... approximately 2007-03-22T12:18:00T-0700. Also very possible that said email address was (semi-)automagically added to balug-announce if said address was subscribed to balug-talk but not balug-announce (looks like that policy was added around 2008-01-02T09:40:26-0800). I also checked ye oldest mail archive copies I have - that were long ago pulled from archive.org ... those copies are in individual files, not compressed nor tar(1)ed or the like - so if there were any matches for that last name string there, that find(1) would have found them. Interestingly, seems like there are zero posts from said email ... unless perhaps they were removed, or might be among the list posts I wasn't able to find/save/recover.
Does seem odd that said email address is subscribed to balug-talk and balug-announce, and I'm presuming no atypical settings there, yet was administratively blocked from balug-admin.
Checking (at least much/most) of my own email archives, I find only one email, and it looks highly innocuous (excerpted bits):
From: Rick [REDACTED] <rick[REDACTED]@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [BALUG-Announce] BALUG: No Dec. meeting, next mtg. 2015-01-20; & other news Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 11:44:13 -0800 To: Michael Paoli Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu
Merry Christmas!
Thanks, rickd
On Dec 16, 2014, at 10:37 AM, Michael Paoli Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu wrote:
BALUG: No Dec. meeting, next mtg. 2015-01-20; & other news
references/excerpts:
From: "Rick Moen" rick@linuxmafia.com Subject: [BALUG-Admin] A certain Rick De Gae tano Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2017 13:59:29 -0700
In reviewing the administrative settings, I see signs that someone might have powerfully annoyed BALUG admins, and I'm curious if anyone remembers the history.
This guy's name is first name Rick, second name that I'm writing with spaces inserted so he won't find this discussion if ego-searching his own name: 'De Gae tano'. (Remove the space characters.) His e-mail address is or was rickde gae tano@yahoo.com. (Remove spaces. Same reason.)
What I'm talking about is: 'rickde gae tano@yahoo.com' is the sole address listed as banned from subscribing to balug-admin, and also the sole address whose postings will be held for moderation on balug-admin. I removed the first ban, but am keeping the 'hold for moderation' one while asking if anyone remembers what this is about.
Mailman ban & moderation rosters, in my experience, accumulate some entries by accident, or by overquick admin action. It's useful to prune them occasionally.
Also on balug-talk, Rick D.'s address is the sole address whose postings would be held for moderation. I'm leaving that while waiting to hear why.
Basically, was Rick D. some sort of epic pain? What kinda pain? I'm really curious. (Tell me offlist if that's useful.)
There's an IT consultant in Burlingame of that name.
Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu):
Other than those atypical settings themselves, I've found no reason for them to be there. In my checking, here's what I found - and what just wasn't there to be found:
You know, I'm going to err on the side of amnesty and remove the sanctions against Michael D.'s posting address on balug-talk and balug-admin. If we-all can't even remember why that was done, I'd rather err on the side of permissiveness.
Searching 'da Interwebs - with demangling of said last name and balug - some search hit results, but nothing seeming of particular relevance.
Yeah, I did that, too. If he'd been a particularly egregious pill in public during living memory, one would expect that to leave a searchable trace.
The awkward bit is that unless I/we have a conversation with Rick D. on the order of 'Hey, guy, looks like some past BALUG listadmin put you under heavy supervision for reasons unknown to us, and we've just removed those', he may keep thinking his Yahoo Mail account is on moderated status in balug-talk and balug-admin[1] -- if he's even aware of that having been previously the case.
(For all I know, he might have walked away from Yahoo Mail years ago. Many people have.)
[1] Whoever put his Yahoo Mail address, within the balug-admin WebUI screens, into _both_ the 'List of addresses which are banned from membership in this mailing list' roster and the 'List of non-member addresses whose postings will be immediately held for moderation' roster wasn't thinking clearly. The second had no effect because of the first being present.
A post from 2009 that may, perhaps only partly, answer your question. I've edited it to include the extra spaces that Rick used in the original post.
Mike Higashi
Date: 3/16/09
From: Andrew Fife AFife@untangle.com
to: rick de gae tano, balug-admin
Hi rickd:
[removing rsvp@balug.org and including balug-admin@lists.balug.org]
Sorry for the difficulty that you are having unsubscribing. You should be able to unscubscribe from the following page:
http://lists.balug.org/listinfo.cgi/balug-announce-balug.org
You will also need to respond to the auto-confirmation email that is sent to all unsubscribe events in order to be removed from the list.
I hope this is helpful.
-Andrew
-- Andrew Fife Untangle 650.425.3327 desk 415.806.6028 cell
From: Rick De Gae tano [mailto:rick de gae tano@yahoo.com] Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 1:48 PM To: rsvp@balug.org Subject: Re: [BALUG-Announce] TOMORROW!: BALUG: Tu 2009-03-17 Jordan Gray (STARPAUSE) talk/demo on DJing and Music Composition on Linux
I have tried to unsubscribe to this list, it doesn't work, how can I get off of this list?
Thanks, rickd
--- On Mon, 3/16/09, Michael Paoli Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu wrote:
From: Michael Paoli Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu Subject: [BALUG-Announce] TOMORROW!: BALUG: Tu 2009-03-17 Jordan Gray (STARPAUSE) talk/demo on DJing and Music Composition on Linux To: balug-announce@lists.balug.org Date: Monday, March 16, 2009, 12:53 PM
Quoting Mike Higashi (mhigashi@gmail.com):
A post from 2009 that may, perhaps only partly, answer your question. I've edited it to include the extra spaces that Rick used in the original post.
Thanks for the suggestion, Mike. It remains a small puzzlement, I think.
(Anyway, I do think de-restricting rickd is clearly in order. Whatever occasioned those measures, we're long past that.)
Thanks for the information, Mike.
Yes, for some number of years now, for the folks that ask/demand that I/we unsubscribe them ... well, I got tired of constructing individualized replies from off-the-top-of-my-head - plus adding any details that might be particularly relevant/pertinent ... so I created a template: https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:unsubscribe And, for at least as long as I've been using essentially that text, it seems "well enough" constructed to be quite effective. It reasonably puts the "burden" back on the requester - also providing relevant information - and seems sufficiently effective. Seems they either successfully unsubscribe, or maybe they just move on to complain about other stuff they ought do themselves that they want someone else to do for them. In any case, at least thus far, when I've sent such email, don't think I ever heard from them (whomever) again asking/requesting/demanding that I(/we) unsubscribe them.
And I think Rick's actions on the clean-up, etc. sound perfectly fine to me - thank you Rick! Very possible/likely some fair number of years back, someone mishandled it or overreacted or made sub-optimal choices as to best handling/reaction.
I also have a boilerplate response to the "can I post a job" queries: https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=balug:can_i_post_a_job_-_and_boi...
references/excerpts:
From: "Mike Higashi" mhigashi@gmail.com Subject: Re: [BALUG-Admin] A certain Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 19:12:21 -0700
A post from 2009 that may, perhaps only partly, answer your question. I've edited it to include the extra spaces that Rick used in the original post.
Mike Higashi
Date: 3/16/09
From:
to: , balug-admin
Hi :
[removing rsvp@balug.org and including balug-admin@lists.balug.org]
Sorry for the difficulty that you are having unsubscribing. You should be able to unscubscribe from the following page:
http://lists.balug.org/listinfo.cgi/balug-announce-balug.org
You will also need to respond to the auto-confirmation email that is sent to all unsubscribe events in order to be removed from the list.
I hope this is helpful.
--
From: [mailto:] Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 1:48 PM To: rsvp@balug.org
I have tried to unsubscribe to this list, it doesn't work, how can I get off of this list?
Thanks,
--- On Mon, 3/16/09, Michael Paoli Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu wrote:
From: Michael Paoli Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu Subject: [BALUG-Announce] TOMORROW!: BALUG: Tu 2009-03-17 Jordan Gray (STARPAUSE) talk/demo on DJing and Music Composition on Linux To: balug-announce@lists.balug.org Date: Monday, March 16, 2009, 12:53 PM