[Tools-discuss] Collection of glitches on the nonwg mailing lists list

Sorry.  While the message below was sent to tools-help as directed on
the relevant page, I have just discovered it is a more general
problem.   Especially given Greg's recent note on the IETF list about
other Postorium/ Mailmain 3 issues, it may be worth warning others
and perhaps more general discussion.

Apparently, if one goes to https://datatracker.ietf.org/list/nonwg (a
place some, I suspect many) of us go to track down information about
particular mailings lists, what they are called, and the location of
subscription information and archives, many of the entries have
broken links. In a non-trivial number of cases, the problem is that
the entry for list "foo" points to
https://mailman3.ietf.org/mailman3/lists/Foo@ietf.org/ where it
should point to
https://mailman3.ietf.org/mailman3/lists/foo@ietf.org/, where the
actual information is available.

While "i18ndir", as discussed below, may be obscure, I note, as
particularly interesting, that
   alldispatch
   architecture-discuss
   art
   eligibility-discuss 
   gen-art
   hotrfc
   iab
   i-d-announce
   ietf-announce
   ima
   int-area
   mib-doctors
   mtgvenue
   ops-area
   rfp-announce
   rsab
   terminology
   tools-help
   tools-discuss
   training-wgchairs
   travel-grants-committee
   tsv-art
   wgguide
that is by no means a complete list but illustrates that the problem
spans a broad range of IETF Areas and IETF-related activities and
groups including the LLC, IAB, IRTF, and RFC Editor policies
(although RSWG does not appear on the list at all, something I think
has been noted previously).  Many other lists work.  I don't know if
they have been individually reported and patched or if there is some
pattern I cannot discern.

But it is probably time, before we conclude that the transition to
Mailman3/ Postorius is complete, for someone to go through that page,
test all the links, and fix the ones that produce "no found"
errors... and do that before IETF 120 for which a subset of those
listed above (and maybe others) might be particularly important. 

Suggestion if that cannot be done Real Soon Now: It appears as if
there is a dedicated "page not found" catcher in Postorius because,
all of the bad links produce the same "Page not found": "This page
either doesn't exist, or it moved somewhere else." page.   Can that
be modified to suggest that people inspect the URL that produced that
page and, if it contains upper-case characters, they experiment with
changing them to lower case and trying the URL again.  I've tried
several, but not all, of the cases listed above and those that I
tried worked.  Obviously not ideal, but better than leaving people
wondering and frustrated.

More below about digging into a specific case and a few other
problems.

best,
   john

--On Tuesday, June 4, 2024 20:11 -0400 John C Klensin
<john-ietf@jck.com> wrote:

> Hi.  
> On <https://datatracker.ietf.org/list/nonwg>, the entry for
> "i18ndir" points to
> <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/I18ndir>, which produces a
> "page not found" message.   
> 
> This appears to be another instance of a case-sensitivity problem
> because https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/i18ndir produces a
> relevant page.  
> 
> I'm uncertain about the status of that list.  On the one hand, the
> directorate was closed some time ago.    On the other, it might be
> the last useful centralized list for i18n discussions or, if there
> is another one, it should probably be reflected on the i18ndir page
> once it can be found in the obvious way.
> 
> Also, IIR, while the directorate was active, directorate (and hence
> mailing list) membership was by invitation.  This page seems to
> imply that anyone can now join, which might or might not be what is
> wanted.
> 
> The ADs should probably make up their minds and then the link should
> be corrected and the mailing list page tweaked and/or the entry
> moved from the "nonWG" page to the "concluded" one.
> 
> General suggestion to the tools team: Unless we have decided that
> the "owners" of a mailing list should be secret, it would be a good
> idea to list them, and maybe their addresses, on the mailing list
> pages. If we have decided their names are secret, I question that
> decision given that, e.g., we make WG Chair names and the like
> public.  At worst, the names should be omitted only if list owners
> request that and get approval some someone like a relevant AD.   
> 
> Probably even more important, there have been enough problems with
> reaching people via ietf.org address aliases that, unless you are
> confident that those problems have been solved --now and forever--
> identifying mailing list "owners" by name (and probably address) on
> the mailing list pages is particularly relevant.
> 
> best,
>    john