listname error message unclear
Hi! Let me tell you a little usability story. :)
I got an error message trying to send this admin command to schleuder:
x-subscribe: me@example.com $FINGERPRINT
The error was:
Your message didn't contain the mandatory X-LISTNAME-keyword, thus it was rejected.
So I looked up the docs. In schleuder2, there's no such thing, so I figured I must be using a Schleuder3 host - but that's just a guess! Maybe making that explicit in the headers or actually linking to documentation could help here.
So I look for X-LISTNAME-keyword
in the docs: no luck, that doesn't exist. I try with X-LISTNAME
and find this:
To improve consistency with the English language, X-LISTNAME has been renamed to X-LIST-NAME. X-LISTNAME still works, but will be deprecated, therefore please use X-LIST-NAME from now on.
Still confused. I guess X-LIST-NAME
is what I need? So I try this:
x-list-name: foo@example.net x-subscribe: me@example.com $FINGERPRINT
I think this should have worked, but it could have failed if the host is running an older version of Schleuder... But I couldn't figure out if it worked, because a different failure popped up. I got this by email:
Reporting-MTA: dns; example.net
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: 6B123146E6C
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; me@example.com
Arrival-Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2018 23:32:47 +0100 (CET)
Final-Recipient: rfc822; lists.example.net-foo-request@example.net
Original-Recipient: rfc822;foo-request@lists.example.net
Action: failed
Status: 5.3.0
Diagnostic-Code: x-unix; Error: Your message was found empty and wasn't passed
on to the list. In case you only sent keywords please note that
administrative keywords must be sent to the "request"-address
(<foo-request@lists.example.net>) in order to be respected. Kind regards,
Your Schleuder system.
See what's strange is I did send the message to foo-request@lists.example.net
. Maybe this is a configuration problem on the other end? Nevertheless, this kind of error message would be very hard to read by a non-sysadmin. I'm used to those message and can tell something is going on, and I'm pretty sure it's a configuration issue on the other end. But other users will be simply lost.
My recommendations:
-
Change the first error message from:
Your message didn't contain the mandatory X-LISTNAME-keyword, thus it was rejected
to this:
Your message did not contain the required "x-listname" command and was rejected.
This clearly states what the command is: it's not a keyword, it's a command. And the command is not
x-listname-something
, as the first message might imply, it's justx-listname
. -
Avoid using bounce messages for some errors (and not others) and send real emails for all error messages. There might be some valid technical reason why bounces are used in some places and not others that I'm not aware of, of course...
-
Regarding the configuration issue, I'm not sure what to suggest, because I don't know what the actual problem is... But maybe the install documentation could be improved at that level...
Thanks, and sorry for the multi-faceted report.