Thehelpfulonewiki wrote:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/admin/wikimedia-l/archive doesn't seem to have changed - Archive is still Yes and Public. Is this occurring for any other mailing lists?

mcdevitd wrote:

According to http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-February/thread.html it was last archived "Fri Feb 21 08:19:40 UTC 2014", more than 2.5 days ago. Other lists (at random) show more recent archives.

This breakage was seemingly the result of someone in operations tampering with the archives.

Just fixed the 403 error, it was an oversight on my part when restoring the pre February archives.

Thehelpfulonewiki wrote:

(In reply to Alexandros Kosiaris from comment #4)

Just fixed the 403 error, it was an oversight on my part when restoring the
pre February archives.

Please could you explain what you were doing to the archives and who requested it?

Sure, I chose to rebuild the archives after a request from legal to redact some private info in a message in February. Turns out this broke all the pipermail links due to mailman arch creating new IDs for all messages, so I restored from backups everything except February to fix that. In that restoration process I did not set correctly the properties of index.html, causing the 403 problem. After some internal discussions we decided AND documented this (that is the rebuild of archives) should never happen again (at least until the problem is fixed, I have a TODO in my list to see if this is still a problem in mailman 3.x)

Alexandros: Thanks for explaining!
Closing as FIXED as the 403 error is gone now.

The archive still seems not to have been updated since 21 February, though.

(In reply to Alexandros Kosiaris from comment #6)

After some internal discussions we decided AND
documented this (that is the rebuild of archives) should never happen again

Thanks! The edit is https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Remove_a_message_from_mailing_list_archive&diff=next&oldid=101054 which I also reflected in the section below now https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Remove_a_message_from_mailing_list_archive&diff=101076&oldid=101056.

(In reply to wctaiwan from comment #8)

The archive still seems not to have been updated since 21 February, though.

Hmpf, that's right, last email in HTML archive Fri Feb 21 08:18:58 UTC 2014 http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-February/070380.html
Probably wrong permissions on the February index, the following number is now in use for a Tue Feb 25 16:06:31 UTC 2014 message http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2014-February/070381.html so at least part of the archival process was just restored.

(In reply to wctaiwan from comment #8)

The archive still seems not to have been updated since 21 February, though.

Filed as bug 61917.

Just noting that this "bug" in Mailman archiving has been known for years, and is the reason that for many years there was a flat-out refusal to alter Mailman archives. In fact, there was a similar episode about a year ago involving archives of another public mailing list, and I understand has happened in the more distant past as well. Please ensure that this is included in the documentation for Mailman; it's unfortunate that this knowledge is not being passed on.

(In reply to Risker from comment #12)

happened in the more distant past as well. Please ensure that this is
included in the documentation for Mailman; it's unfortunate that this
knowledge is not being passed on.

that has been done in https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Remove_a_message_from_mailing_list_archive&action=history

(In reply to Daniel Zahn from comment #13)

(In reply to Risker from comment #12)

happened in the more distant past as well. Please ensure that this is
included in the documentation for Mailman; it's unfortunate that this
knowledge is not being passed on.

that has been done in
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.
php?title=Remove_a_message_from_mailing_list_archive&action=history

Thanks, Daniel. However, the paragraph at the bottom should be at the top, in bold lettering, and marked as the very first step to be done even before getting into the technical aspects. I do not have access to that project so am unable to make that edit.

(In reply to Risker from comment #14)

I do not have access to that project so am unable to make that edit.

Eh? You should be able to go to https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Remove+a+message+from+mailing+list+archive and click the green "Join Wikitech" button to create an account on that wiki.

Wikimedia Labs (which includes the wiki at wikitech.wikimedia.org) is outside the realm of [[m:SUL]].