[gmx-developers] Mails rejected with "The message's content type was not explicitly allowed"

[Roland Schulz]

On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 3:42 AM, Erik Lindahl <erik at kth.se> wrote:
> Different issues.
>
> One can certainly add spam filters if somebody wants to, but the gmx-users list now averages around 1,000 messages per month, and lots of people are reading it in digest mode.
>
> We have already reduced the allowed attachment size a _lot_ over the years, and with the spam thing added there is simply no reason to allow attachments. While it's certainly convenient for the author to just drag-and-drop a file into the mail client, it ends up screwing up the digest for hundreds of people, not to mention they frequently aren't interpreted correctly in the archives. There is also the issue with mail load: A single 100kB attachment results in 400MB of outgoing mail (which we can handle, but it feels very unnecessary when 3450 of the readers won't be interested in it).

That's true also for the 10-20k of the mail text itself (including
header I think it is a reasonable estimate) or large log/config files
pasted into the mail body. That is the inherent inefficiency of
mailing lists. At least I suppose that most people only read the
subject lines of most messages. And small attachments are probably a
relative small percentage of the total problem. Solving it would
require using forums or stackoverflow type Q&A pages instead.

The whole thing should not be a problem for any list but gmx-users so
we should at least be able to go back to the old settings for all
other lists.

> Personally I would argue the same thing goes for fancy signatures and HTML contents. As beautiful as an individual author might think their mails are, it ends up being a mess both in digests and the archives. However, on that point I'm open to arguments if somebody can create a short list of non-dangerous attachments that work well with archives.

Well for Gmail the non-html format sucks in inline commenting. As you
can see in this mail. And I don't want to switch my mail client just
because of weird (=different from anyone's else) mailing listing
settings of Gromacs.

Roland


>
> Cheers,
>
> Erik
>
>
> On Jul 5, 2012, at 8:02 PM, Rossen Apostolov wrote:
>
>> I agree too, it is indeed very inconvenient!
>>
>> Google apps seems to be a good idea, shall we go with that?
>>
>> Rossen
>>
>> On 7/5/12 7:19 PM, Roland Schulz wrote:
>>> I agree with Szilard. This is very inconvenient. If we don't have the
>>> time to install spam and virus scanners, I suggest we use a hosted
>>> solution. E.g. we could use Google Apps and forward the mails to
>>> mailman only after Google has scanned the incoming mails for spam and
>>> viruses.
>>>
>>> Roland
>>>
>>> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 10:58 AM, Szilárd Páll <szilard.pall at cbr.su.se> wrote:
>>>> I'm not an expert in fighting spam, but I wonder if this is really an
>>>> adequate solution. AFAIK a spam filter is what's meant to solve such
>>>> problems.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> --
>>>> Szilárd
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 3:24 PM, Rossen Apostolov <rossen at kth.se> wrote:
>>>>> Dear all,
>>>>>
>>>>> Recently the Gromacs mailing lists have been used for sending spam and
>>>>> viruses, and thus now only plain text messages are accepted.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you have received rejected mails saying "The message's content type was
>>>>> not explicitly allowed" it means that you have used in your mail special
>>>>> styles or formatting (e.g. bold typeface, colors etc.).
>>>>>
>>>>> Check your email client settings about how to send messages as plain text,
>>>>> e.g. in GMail make sure to click on "Compose -> Plain Text". Check also
>>>>> whether a formatted signature is added.
>>>>>
>>>>> Attachments are also not allowed but you could include links for downloads.
>>>>>
>>>>> Rossen
>>>>>
>>>>> --
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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>
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