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debian.org/MailingLists - Official information about mailing lists

See first the official information.

Introduction

There are over one hundred mailing lists, each focused on a specific topic.

Find a list in lists.debian.org.

A click on a list name yields this information.

A list can be read via these mechanisms.

Each list has two addresses.

Email Clients, Mail User Agents, MUA

Recommended

Disrecommended

For users

debian-user is probably the most frequented mailing list for users. Any problem using Debian can be discussed there in English. This list receives up to 300--yes, three hundred--mails per day.

Other lists are dedicated to other natural languages and to specific subjects.

Posting a good question

The answer to a question might already be available. Check these areas before posting.

Most lists are unmoderated and will accept a submission from an address which is not subscribed.

Read first the official code of conduct. These points should be born in mind.

Why all these rules? Busy people spend valuable time monitoring lists and responding to questions. The recommended practices make these activities more efficient and pleasant.

Message Threading and Replying

Typically there is at least one reply to a question in the list. The sequence comprising the original message and the replies is commonly referred to as a thread. The software which manages Debian mailing lists stores every submitted message in an archive. When an archived message is displayed by a Web browser, links to antecedent messages and reply messages are displayed. This allows a thread to be followed through the archive. The mailing list software creates these links by referring to the "Message-id", "In-reply-to" and "References" fields in the message header as described in RFC 5322. Typically, when an email client is used to read a message and create a reply, it automatically takes the value from the Message-id field of the antecedent message and inserts it as the value of the In-reply-to field in the reply. Also according to RFC 5322 the client should take the complete value of the References field from the antecedent, append the Message-id of the parent and insert the result as the value for References in the reply.

A thread is easily broken so that links to antecedent messages do not appear in the archive correctly. For example an email client might use only the antecedent Message-id as the value for References. Otherwise an old message can be read from the archive with a browser and a reply can be created with an email client. No email client can extract the Message-id field from the html version of a message archived under http://lists.debian.org/. In this situation, unless the user deliberately inserts values for In-reply-to and References a new thread is created. Some email clients allow the user to construct these fields. Mutt for example has the -H option. The required In-reply-to, References and Subject fields and the message body are placed in a file, named "Draft" for example. "mutt -H Draft" will create the reply with thread connectivity.

See Also


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