Bug#871534: debian-policy: Clarify whether mailing lists in Maintainers/Uploaders may be moderated

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Chris Lamb <lamby@debian.org> writes:

> Hi Bill,

>> How do you define "moderated" ? 

> I can't really, sorry. I guess getting a "Your message awaits moderator
> approval" quasi-bounce… but that's not exactly right.

My personal feeling is that the current vagueness is a feature rather than
a bug.  I think a moderated mailing list is fine *if* the moderation queue
is very promptly processed, but not okay if the moderation queue is just a
place for messages to go to die.

I feel like Policy already strikes a fairly good balance here:

    The maintainer must be specified in the Maintainer control field with
    their correct name and a working email address. The email address
    given in the Maintainer control field must accept mail from those role
    accounts in Debian used to send automated mails regarding the
    package. This includes non-spam mail from the bug-tracking system, all
    mail from the Debian archive maintenance software, and other role
    accounts or automated processes that are commonly agreed on by the
    project.

and also note the footnote, which directly addresses moderated mailing
lists:

    A sample implementation of such a whitelist written for the Mailman
    mailing list management software is used for mailing lists hosted by
    alioth.debian.org.

This language dates from an earlier bug about moderated mailing lists from
ftp-master, and was the result of that bug discussion.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>