Re: Removal from list
brian moore wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2000 at 03:08:15PM -0800, Erik Steffl wrote:
> > brian moore wrote:
> >
> > well, the confusing thing is that the address that I tried to
> > unsubscribe by explicitly listing it in the subject (I have the same
> > problem) is exactly the same as the one listed as similar. And since I
> > explicitly asked for specific address to be unsubscribed I see no reason
> > for SmartList to try to figure out what the address is from headers.
>
> Sure there is. For the simple reason that someone -changed- the defaults
> so that your name would not match.
I almost understand what you are saying (here and below) but I would
think that it would be a fallback behaviour when EXACT match is not
found. I guess that's why I am so puzzled because in my case the EXACTLY
EXACT match is found.
what defaults can change so that steffl@earthlink.com would not match
steffl@earthlink.com?
> > one way or another, I cannot send email from subscribed address (so
> > that all from/reply-to match) and I cannot unsubscribe (not sure if
> > there is causal relationship between the two).
>
> There is.
>
> Again, this is how it works: SmartList sees a name to remove and looks it
> up against the list. It -always- has a certain fuzziness it allows (to
> allow for things like capitalization oddities: JSmith@foo.com and
> jsmith@FOO.COM are almost certainly the same address and making people
> play guessing games to get case right is stupid).
>
> So it gets your request and goes through the subscriber list to find who
> it could be. If there is one match with a value > the 'off_threshold',
> which is, by default, 24476, then that address is assumed to be correctly
> matched and it is removed. If there is more than one or none, there's a
> problem: either the person simply isn't on the list with an address at
> all like they're mailing from, or they may need to insert or remove a
> hostname to make it closer.
>
> In the post I responded to, there -was- one and precisely one address
> with a 'closeness' of more than 24476. It should have removed that
> person happily then.... but it didn't.
>
> Now, add in a bit more info: it used to work for some people, and then
> 'something changed somewhere' and now they can't get off any of the lists
> at debian. The only thing that matches that behavior is that someone has
> either changed ~list/.bin/unsubscribe and broken it completely or they
> have changed the 'match_threshold' values in a misguided effort to 'fix'
> something. (The per-list settings are hardlinked to ~list/.etc/rc.init,
> so changing the 'master' file will affect all the lists.)
>
> SmartList is working fine.
smartlist as a program (or set of program) probably yes. smartlist as
a mailing list system (or as particular installation of smartlist) does
not.
> It is doing -exactly- what it was supposed to. In this case, it's being
> asked to either be so picky about 'exactness' of the match that it isn't
> possible ("which is greater, 0.999999.. or 1?" -- ask a mathemetician
> and ask a floating point chip.... heck, ask a fpu what '1/3 + 2/3' is,
> and it won't be 1) or so loose that damned-near-anything matches, and it
> doesn't know who to remove when it could be any of a thousand people.
> (The 'do you mean..?' mail only lists the top contenders... it
> deliberately does not list all potential matches.)
>
> The problem is simply that someone has changed these settings and needs
> to change them back.
still, why is it that exact match does not take priority over all
other approximate ones? I haven't thought much about mailservers but
generaly the idea is to use deterministic algorithm first, if that fails
try heuristics...
or is it not exact match? why wouldn't steffl@earthlink.com (that I
want to unsubscribe) be an exact match for steffl@earthlink.com (in the
list of subscribers)?
erik
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