Why do my posts appear twice?

Ruby
21

On 6/15/06, Jeremy T. [email protected] wrote:

On 15-Jun-06, at 2:32 PM, Austin Z. wrote:

It’s a Gmail glitch.

I’d have to be a little weary about that statement. I see this exact
same behaviour using Mail on OSX 10.4 from my own mail server – none
of my other lists or whatnot experience this same problem, only ruby-
talk. However, in my case, it’s all messages to ruby-talk get sent
twice, not just my own.

In your case, it’s probably because you’re double subscribed or
something. Not at all the same problem. Regarding the OP’s problem, I
can indeed verify that it is a gmail “feature”. When I post to
ruby-talk using my gmail account, I also see the post duplicated. From
the beginning I suspected this was a gmail thing, and believed it when
others suggested that too. But for the sake of completeness, I
investigated.

For every email in a thread in gmail, you can click the “More options”
link to see a little more detail about the headers for that email. If
that’s not enough, from within the “More options” block, you can click
“Show original” to see the email in all its plain text glory, headers
intact.

Going to a thread to which I’ve posted, I see the two “duplicate”
emails one right after the other. Clicking “More options” for both, I
can see that the first email I see has a “To:” and a “From:”, while
the second has a “To:”, “Reply-To:” and “From:”. The “Reply-To:” for
the second is set to “[email protected]”, just as it is for all
other emails from the list. This is because the ruby-talk list
software does what is commonly known as Reply-To munging. Every
email that comes from the list has this Reply-to header. But the first
copy of my email does not – it can’t have come from the list. So
where did it come from?

Look over to the right hand side in that “More options” box, there’s
the value of the Mailed-By header. Guess what, for every email from
the list, including the second copy of my email, it says
“ruby-lang.org”. But for the first copy, the Mailed-By header is
“gmail.com”. In other words, it is the email that was sent by gmail,
not one you received.

Need further evidence? Go to your “Sent Mail” folder. Choose a
ruby-talk thread and click on it. What’s the first unfolded message it
shows? That’s right, the first copy of your email, which is embedded
right into the thread. It opens to that one because it’s the one you
sent.

In short, you see two copies of your email in the thread because gmail
shows both the original sent copy along with the copy you received
from ruby-talk.

I don’t call this a glitch or bug in gmail, since it’s useful behavior
for most circumstances. Most people using gmail probably don’t CC
themselves when they send an email out, so if they want to see their
email included into the thread, it makes sense to show the sent copy.
But when the mailing list sends you a copy of its own, you see a
“duplicate”. That’s all that’s happening. If it’s not happening for
other lists, it must be because they aren’t sending you a copy of your
own messages – which is perfectly fine. It’s just that ruby-talk’s
default is different, and you can change it if you want.

Jacob F.

22

On 6/15/06, Greg D. [email protected] wrote:

People don’t come on the other lists and ask 'Why do I only receive
one message when I post?" do they?

No, but I have seen non-gmail users on such lists ask “Did my email
make it to the list?” because they never got a copy themselves from
the list, and no one else on the list had responded to their email.

But they do come on ruby-talk and ask “Why do I get duplicate messages
when I post?”

Only if they’re from gmail (I’m not saying that like it’s a bad thing
– I use gmail as well; you just need to understand its behavior). The
ruby-talk mailing list predates gmail.

Jacob F.

23

On 6/15/06, Brendan C. [email protected] wrote:

You are making an utter ass of yourself in public. I’d recommend you stop.

I will proceed to post as long as it suits me. I have not done
anything more than participate in a valid technical discussion about
ruby-talk list serve settings. I’m not even the original poster. I
am merely describing a behavior I see with a very popular email
service and mail client. If that bothers you then procmail yourself a
filter out of my world.

If you don’t like the default behavior of the list, change it. But it’s
a perfectly reasonable way for a mailing list to behave,

If it makes people complain more than a couple of times then it’s a
bad default setting. It doesn’t matter that people can change it,
multiple questions/complaints should have already made it evident a
change was needed. If the server admins disagree then they are only
going to hear more questions and complaints ongoing.

even if it
confuses and annoys you specifically.

Your words, not mine. I don’t post enough to care either way.

I do not get multiples when I
post to ANY mailing lists, because I do not use gmail.

Well goody goody for you. More bandwidth and server space for me and
mine.

24

On 15-Jun-06, at 5:47 PM, Jacob F. wrote:

In your case, it’s probably because you’re double subscribed or
something. Not at all the same problem. Regarding the OP’s problem, I
can indeed verify that it is a gmail “feature”. When I post to
ruby-talk using my gmail account, I also see the post duplicated. From
the beginning I suspected this was a gmail thing, and believed it when
others suggested that too. But for the sake of completeness, I
investigated.

This behaviour only started a little while ago (couple months). I’ve
been subscribed to this list without altering my subscription for
over 2 years.

Jacob F.

–
Jeremy T.
[email protected]

“One serious obstacle to the adoption of good programming languages
is the notion that everything has to be sacrificed for speed. In
computer languages as in life, speed kills.” – Mike Vanier

25

Greg D. wrote:

I will proceed to post as long as it suits me. I have not done
anything more than participate in a valid technical discussion about
ruby-talk list serve settings. I’m not even the original poster.

No, you’re just the one making an ass of himself in public.

I
am merely describing a behavior I see with a very popular email
service and mail client. If that bothers you then procmail yourself a
filter out of my world.

Done. plonk

If it makes people complain more than a couple of times then it’s a
bad default setting.

False.

It doesn’t matter that people can change it,
multiple questions/complaints should have already made it evident a
change was needed.

Changing the setting will produce complaints, as well.

If the server admins disagree then they are only
going to hear more questions and complaints ongoing.

The server admins will hear complaints ongoing, regardless. It’s one of
the hazards of being a mailing list administrator.

-bmc

26

On Jun 16, 2006, at 0:18, Greg D. wrote:

If you don’t like the default behavior of the list, change it.
But it’s
a perfectly reasonable way for a mailing list to behave,

If it makes people complain more than a couple of times then it’s a
bad default setting.

It’s only bad if it’s worse than the alternative, which (as
mentioned) is a number of people posting “did my mail get through?”
Not a complaint, perhaps, but definitely symptomatic of a problem.
Unless you have some hard data on how one problem is worse than the
other, there’s no reason to change the default.

It doesn’t matter that people can change it,
multiple questions/complaints should have already made it evident a
change was needed. If the server admins disagree then they are only
going to hear more questions and complaints ongoing.

If there’s one thing you learn being an admin or moderator of
anything it’s that questions and complaints are always ongoing, no
matter what you do.

Uunless someone comes along with some hard data on the rate of “I get
duplicates” compared to “did my message get through?” on similar-
volume lists with different settings, then there’s little real reason
to change anything.

matthew smillie.

27

On 6/15/06, Greg D. [email protected] wrote:

On 6/15/06, Brendan C. [email protected] wrote:

If you don’t like the default behavior of the list, change it. But it’s
a perfectly reasonable way for a mailing list to behave,

If it makes people complain more than a couple of times then it’s a
bad default setting. It doesn’t matter that people can change it,
multiple questions/complaints should have already made it evident a
change was needed. If the server admins disagree then they are only
going to hear more questions and complaints ongoing.

“The customer is always right”?

As I mentioned, I have seen plenty of people complain about the
reverse setting as well. I’ve been on lists where reply-to munging has
been flipped off then on then off then on again because there were
vocal minorities on both sides of that holy war, while most in the
middle didn’t care either way. You’re never going to please everyone.
Unless it’s broke, don’t fix it. And you’re not going to convince me
it’s broke while:

  1. Only a couple of people from one MUA are complaining, and
  2. They have a perfectly valid means to “fix it” themselves available

Jacob F.

28

On 6/15/06, Jeremy T. [email protected] wrote:

This behaviour only started a little while ago (couple months). I’ve
been subscribed to this list without altering my subscription for
over 2 years.

shrug I can’t speak to that. It may be that a glitch in the software
added a second subscription, someone else entered your address in a
form, whatever. I didn’t mean to imply that you personally had
subscribed yourself twice. Or maybe it’s some other glitch. I don’t
know.

My main point there was that contrary to your assertion “I see this
exact same behaviour”, your situtation was actually quite different
from that of the original poster.

Jacob F.

29

On 15-Jun-06, at 7:34 PM, Jacob F. wrote:

shrug I can’t speak to that. It may be that a glitch in the software
added a second subscription, someone else entered your address in a
form, whatever. I didn’t mean to imply that you personally had
subscribed yourself twice. Or maybe it’s some other glitch. I don’t
know.

Perhaps, I’ll have a look but I have my doubts.

My main point there was that contrary to your assertion “I see this
exact same behaviour”, your situtation was actually quite different
from that of the original poster.

Behaviour is not indicative of cause. You can get the same behaviour
from different sources (as witnessed by the invention of the elevator
for one example).

Jacob F.

–
Jeremy T.
[email protected]

“One serious obstacle to the adoption of good programming languages
is the notion that everything has to be sacrificed for speed. In
computer languages as in life, speed kills.” – Mike Vanier

30

On 6/15/06, Greg D. [email protected] wrote:

On 6/15/06, Austin Z. [email protected] wrote:

If those other lists are not set up for “send me my own message” –
which ruby-talk is set up for by default – you won’t get duplicate
messages.

And ruby-talk’s default setting is the right one. Gmail’s setting
(which is not changeable) is the wrong one.
So then it’s a poorly chosen default setting with ruby-talk itself.

No, it isn’t. ruby-talk has been configured like this for at least
four years, when I joined some time ago. What has changed is not
ruby-talk, but Gmail.

People don’t come on the other lists and ask 'Why do I only receive
one message when I post?" do they?

Nope.

But they do come on ruby-talk and ask “Why do I get duplicate messages
when I post?”

Mostly because they don’t bother to understand what’s going on and
generally blame it on a mailing list that is configured correctly.

Look, I know what I’m talking about here. While I’ve never been wholly
responsible for writing an MUA, I have been extensively involved in
the maintenance of one. The only thing that ruby-talk does that
strict mailing list adherents argue against is Reply-To munging. And
that is because they’re silly people who say ni.

-austin

31

Hi,

In message “Re: Why do my posts appear twice?”
on Fri, 16 Jun 2006 03:40:25 +0900, “Greg D.”
[email protected] writes:

|> It’s a Gmail glitch.
|
|No, it’s a ruby-talk glitch. Otherwise I would see the same issue
|with other lists.

This is interesting. The mechanism of duplicated messages is as
explained in [ruby-talk:197553]. I do want to know how other lists
avoid this problem. Regretting messages to the posters is just no
way. I have ever heard that setting up skip filters for author copied
messages to ruby-talk might work. But I am not sure if filters on
Gmail work for author copies.

						matz.
32

On 6/15/06, Jeremy T. [email protected] wrote:

This behaviour only started a little while ago (couple months). I’ve
been subscribed to this list without altering my subscription for
over 2 years.

Correct. I’ve been subscribed to ruby-talk through various addresses
and subscribed to ruby-talk just over two years ago when I first got
my gmail account. The only thing that I’d argue with is that this
happened six or eight months ago.

-austin

33

On 6/15/06, Yukihiro M. [email protected] wrote:

messages to ruby-talk might work. But I am not sure if filters on
Gmail work for author copies.

Okay. I’ve done some further looking at this. This is not a
ruby-talk problem in any way. Ruby-talk does behave a little
differently than most other mailing lists, and part of it is what you
illustrated in your message above ([ruby-talk:197553]). ruby-talk adds
a few extra headers that most mailing lists do not. This gives Gmail
the impression that it is a wholly separate message and therefore it
doesn’t suppress it (or better, suppress your sent copy) on receipt.

This is something that the Gmail team needs to fix; they know the
message-id that they used when sending the message; they should know
that a message that matches in every way except headers should also
be the same and therefore should suppress your sent message in favour
of the (marked up) message from the mailing list.

But I have always had both my sent copy and my received copy
regardless of the MUA that I’ve used. It’s just that most MUAs don’t
copy the sent message to the originating folder.

-austin

34

On 6/15/06, Austin Z. [email protected] wrote:

On 6/15/06, Jeremy T. [email protected] wrote:

This behaviour only started a little while ago (couple months). I’ve
been subscribed to this list without altering my subscription for
over 2 years.
Correct. I’ve been subscribed to ruby-talk through various addresses
and subscribed to ruby-talk just over two years ago when I first got
my gmail account. The only thing that I’d argue with is that this
happened six or eight months ago.

Sorry. I misunderstood.

Jeremy, have you changed your MUA by chance? If so, does your MUA copy
sent messages – especially replies – to the originating folders? It
could be that your MUA is now applying the same filters used in
receiving messages to messages you send, too, which is essentially
the same problem as what is being seen in Gmail.

-austin

35

On 15-Jun-06, at 11:35 PM, Austin Z. wrote:

Sorry. I misunderstood.

Jeremy, have you changed your MUA by chance? If so, does your MUA copy
sent messages – especially replies – to the originating folders? It
could be that your MUA is now applying the same filters used in
receiving messages to messages you send, too, which is essentially
the same problem as what is being seen in Gmail.

No, I’ve been happily using OSX’s Mail application for my mail for
the last 3 1/2 years. I use IMAP not POP3 for handling my messages so
I can (if I need too) check my mail from other locations, retrieve
old messages that I’ve saved, etc. I have rules set up so that
whenever a ruby-talk message comes in, it goes to the appropriate
folder and stays there until I delete it. None of my setup has
changed in the last … 7 or so months (since I upgraded to 10.4) and
that “change” was just in the version of Mail (newer version, config
still the same).

I should note that the same rules I use for ruby-talk are also
applied to the various freebsd lists I’m on, the GNUstep lists I’m
on, and the Io language mailing list – ruby-talk is the only one
that gives me duplicates (for everybody’s messages, not just my own).

-austin

–
Jeremy T.
[email protected]

“One serious obstacle to the adoption of good programming languages
is the notion that everything has to be sacrificed for speed. In
computer languages as in life, speed kills.” – Mike Vanier

36

Yukihiro M. [email protected] writes:

This is interesting. The mechanism of duplicated messages is as
explained in [ruby-talk:197553]. I do want to know how other lists
avoid this problem. Regretting messages to the posters is just no
way. I have ever heard that setting up skip filters for author copied
messages to ruby-talk might work. But I am not sure if filters on
Gmail work for author copies.

Would it be possible to hack the mailing list software not to send
duplicates if the subscriber is from gmail.com? :wink:
(Personally, I like that feature. It makes Gnus show my post in the
threads, too.)

37

Hi,

In message “Re: Why do my posts appear twice?”
on Fri, 16 Jun 2006 22:17:43 +0900, Christian N.
[email protected] writes:

|Would it be possible to hack the mailing list software not to send
|duplicates if the subscriber is from gmail.com? :wink:

Possible. But I don’t want to, just because our list server is
written in P* language.

						matz.
38

On 6/16/06, Yukihiro M. [email protected] wrote:

In message “Re: Why do my posts appear twice?”
on Fri, 16 Jun 2006 22:17:43 +0900, Christian N. [email protected] writes:
|Would it be possible to hack the mailing list software not to send
|duplicates if the subscriber is from gmail.com? :wink:
Possible. But I don’t want to, just because our list server is
written in P* language.

And I don’t want you to. As I said, it’s not a ruby-talk glitch.
It’s a Gmail glitch.

If I don’t get the separate message, it’ll be that much harder to
find out what the message’s [ruby-talk:#] is, and I’m not interested
in that.

-austin

39

On 6/18/06, Steven L. [email protected] wrote:

So has anyone bothered to take the single potentially constructive
step of reporting it to the Gmail team?

I haven’t, because it stopped bothering me a long time ago.

-austin

40

“Austin Z.” [email protected] writes:

way. I have ever heard that setting up skip filters for author copied

This is something that the Gmail team needs to fix; they know the
message-id that they used when sending the message; they should know
that a message that matches in every way except headers should also
be the same and therefore should suppress your sent message in favour
of the (marked up) message from the mailing list.

So has anyone bothered to take the single potentially constructive
step of reporting it to the Gmail team?

Steve