thehelpfulone, i know you have also requested this and you were auto-cc'ed. so here you go.

list admins please update:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/admin/<listname>

minimal: -> [General Options] -> A terse phrase identifying this list.
(Details for description)

optional: "An introductory description - a few paragraphs - about the list. It will be included, as html, at the top of the listinfo page."

Thehelpfulonewiki wrote:

Thanks Daniel, I've already set up a page on Meta relating to this, I was going to email all list admins with what my proposed change was and give them 2 weeks to respond, no response means it will be done. Page is at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone/Mailing_lists_cleanup - I have adopted a standard format of translated description first then the English description.

Please don't do any changes yourself, yet, I have this set up in mind to send a courtesy email to all list admins first.

Ok, i was about to create a mail just like this and was momentarily thinking about how to script "all list owners without description". Would that be work done twice? I shall stop for now unless you tell me you need (updated) info or something.

Thehelpfulonewiki wrote:

Actually, I'm just going to send to the -owner email address, but there's a chance people don't look at this or have these emails to be filtered elsewhere. Can you give me a listing (privately) of all the list admin email addresses per mailing list, that is the people in the list admin email field, do that they are more likely to see my email address?

If this is not doable or is an issue, I can use the -owner email address, I would just like to make sure that as many list admins see my email as possible.

overkill or reasonable to just keep using bugzilla and actually assign it to all affected list owner adresses to comment in until it is resolved? :)

Thehelpfulonewiki wrote:

My email will include:

Old mailing list description: <old terse phrase>

New mailing list description: <New terse phrase>

Much more personal and then they can just say yes/no/tweak instead of having to think of something or check if they have a list terse phrase.

please use the email addresses you fetch from public list overview html as "list run by". note how there is an "obfuscated" one like "foo_at_bla.net"-link with a link target like foo-owner@lists.wm. If you are worried you do not get attention at owner@ addresses that a) is a good point to make because they should have (some) attention b) if you reconstruct the "real" addresses from the link (at->@) and also mail these that seems legit to raise your chance to avoid filters

Thehelpfulonewiki wrote:

I will use the list -owner email address then, it's far too much work to get that list run by addresses for over 100 mailing lists, and your point a) is a valid one.

it's scriptable. on server or for anyone from public, but yeah, also a one-time action. i mailed 2 recently created ones manually. it is also a good cleanup task if you want to note which lists appear to not have owners, might want an owner change or additional owners added.

Thehelpfulonewiki wrote:

Yes, okay so that's why I would like you to do it, then I don't need to mess around with converting email addresses etc.

Please run the query, and privately provide me with a list of both the list owners and the list moderators email addresses for all lists, in a normal example@domain.com format - with none of the anti spam adjustments.

Wait why does anyone need the "real" addresses? I mean the point of these owner addresses is that a) the real address is reachable there anyways and 2) [yes I did just say "a" and 2] these are easily scriptable, why make things harder than they need to be?

Yes, sorry. I am currently not planning to do this as using the owner addresses is better, you already have a raw list of all list names and all you have to do is use listname-ower@lists.wm.

back to topic: boldly just fixed these for now, of course they can still update, but less "no description".

design -> A list for the design team.

museum-l -> merged with / converted to the "glam" list

Otrs-es -> Spanish OTRS discussion / OTRS discusión en Español

toolserver-l -> A list for the Toolserver run by WMFDE

travel -> A list for travel related discussion.

wiki-offline-reader-l -> deprecated - please use offline-l

wikimedia-california -> Wikimedia California

wikimedia-connecticut -> Wikimedia Connecticut

Wikimediareference-l -> "Discussion about the use reference sources by Wikimedians"

WikiPT -> Portuguese Wikipedia

Wikiversityde-l -> German Wikiversity

Wiktionarypt-l -> Portuguese Wiktionary

wmfkids -> A list for Wikimedians with kids.

Thehelpfulonewiki wrote:

Just as an update, I sent emails out today to all those lists where the list descriptions needed tweaked in my opinion, I've requested a response by 17 October (2 weeks from now), else I'm presuming they don't have a problem with the change. I'll update again in a couple of weeks.

Mediawiki-distributors: done. (and also made the case change for the list name itself. Yes, just changing case is not a problem).

Updated 15 descriptions per a Google docs document with the replies from list admins provided by Thehelpfulone.

checked and was done already: wikinews-zh

done:

wikinews-fa
WiktionaryDE-l
Toolserver-announce
Press-nl
WikimediaMY
WikimediaDK
WikimediaHR
Wikimediaau-l

done:

gozetmen
Exyu-tech
WikiSV-l
WikiFI-l
Bilderberg-l
Oversight-request-fiwiki-l
Mediawiki-enterprise
WikiDE-l
wikija-l
Otrs-de-l
Wikinews-de-l
WikiPL-l
WikimediaBR-l
Wikimediaco-l
Crc-es-l

already has another description meanwhile:

Glamtools

already done:

WikiFR-l

done:

Wikies-l
WikiEO-l
Arbcom-ko
Wikimedia-kk
Wikipedia-CAK
Wikiia-l
Pressemeldungen
Wikiid-l
Wikihe-l
Wikibooksde-l
Wikiskan-l
Wikieu-l
Destacado-l
Egyptopedia-l
Privacy-fr-wp
Wikimediafr-l
Wikimedianl-l
WikiNL-l
Car-fr-l
Wikimedia-DE-BY
Wikipedia-bn-help
InfoBG-L
Wikihu-l
Wiki-offline-reader-l
Wikifr-colloque-l
was done:

Moderators-nl

I just see a single list that currently has no description available. That is Wikimetrics, and it's relatively new.

https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimetrics

per RT 5554.

I'll ask Diederik and already closing this ticket.