Censorship on sage-support?

[Simon King]

Hi!

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sage-support/CDP_tmDAs5c was
marked as spam. Then, I and other people confirmed that it is not
spam, and it became visible. But then it was hidden again.

Why is that? Is the host of our discussion lists perhaps automatically
banning certain words, even if people confirm that everything is OK?

Note that banned words can seem quite innocent. For example, consider
the German translation of the word "please": The German word is
spelled in exactly the same way as a rather rude French word -- and
therefore German-speaking yahoo forums do not allow to say "please" in
German!

At http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/a080d3ddf95f88ce
it was suggested to use gmane for reading and posting the Sage
discussion lists. But that is not enough, IMHO. I believe that such
extremely stupid automatic moderation can not be tolerated. So, what
about looking for a different host of our lists? There are too many
sage-related lists anyway...

I am not sure whether the topic is really to be considered sage-flame.
Personally, I think dysfunctional discussion groups are bad for
development, and thus the topic belongs to sage-devel. but "dropping
google" is perhaps a bit too controversial for sage-devel - who
knows?

Cheers,
Simon

[William Stein]

On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 12:58 PM, Simon King <simon...@uni-jena.de> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sage-support/CDP_tmDAs5c was
> marked as spam. Then, I and other people confirmed that it is not
> spam, and it became visible. But then it was hidden again.

I saw your message, looked, and marked it not spam, and now it is not
hidden. I think because I own the group, this worked.

> Why is that? Is the host of our discussion lists perhaps automatically
> banning certain words, even if people confirm that everything is OK?
>
> Note that banned words can seem quite innocent. For example, consider
> the German translation of the word "please": The German word is
> spelled in exactly the same way as a rather rude French word -- and
> therefore German-speaking yahoo forums do not allow to say "please" in
> German!
>
> At http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/a080d3ddf95f88ce
> it was suggested to use gmane for reading and posting the Sage
> discussion lists. But that is not enough, IMHO. I believe that such
> extremely stupid automatic moderation can not be tolerated. So, what
> about looking for a different host of our lists? There are too many
> sage-related lists anyway...
>
> I am not sure whether the topic is really to be considered sage-flame.

Your tone above makes it a reasonable post for sage-flame :-)

> Personally, I think dysfunctional discussion groups are bad for
> development, and thus the topic belongs to sage-devel. but "dropping
> google" is perhaps a bit too controversial for sage-devel - who
> knows?

>
> Cheers,
> Simon
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-flame" group.
> To post to this group, send email to sage-...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-flame+...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-flame?hl=en.
>

--
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

[Bill Hart]

It's very important to understand how these automatic moderation tools
work and how serious they are. For a start, the idea that you can know
why the message is marked as spam is naive. It would defeat the whole
utility of them if you could simply know why your post failed the
moderation test.

I should think there'll very likely be a flag added to your email
account to be stored with various organisations that control such
things. They are of course not public institutions. But they clearly
operate in the interest of the public.

Oh, to be sure, occasionally mail that is not spam is marked as spam,
and who am I to say that your post was actually spam. That's not for
me to judge, but for others.

You can of course appeal the decision of the spam filter, but you'll
need an advocate. These cases can be quite involved, and I shouldn't
expect an easy outcome. Why, I know a man who five years ago had a
post marked as spam, and as yet he hasn't even reached the highest
level of arbitration. I should think it could go on for years. I've
even heard that these things are hopeless. Though I shouldn't lose
hope. Once hope is lost, everything is lost.

Bill.

[Harald Schilly]

On Monday, March 19, 2012 8:58:20 PM UTC+1, Simon King wrote:

Why is that? Is the host of our discussion lists perhaps automatically
banning certain words, even if people confirm that everything is OK?

what you try to imply or infer is not true, but there is an automatic spam protection - probably very similar to gmail's spam filter. 

but you never ever see those messages, because only we as admins/managers of the group see them in a special page and we can review them before they are posted. this also only happens very very rarely.

in this case you are referring to, my only explanation is that someone marked it as spam.

h

[Simon King]

Hi William,

On 19 Mrz., 21:16, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I saw your message, looked, and marked it not spam, and now it is not
> hidden.

For the record: I was not talking about a message of mine, but was
talking about the original message in the thread I cited, which was
from a user called Ravi.

The related thread on sage-devel also had some problems, though. It
was shown that there are 5 messages in the thread, but when one opened
the thread, only two of them were there. So, in contrast to Ravi's
post on sage-support (which could be opened by confirming that one
does want to read a potentially abusive post), three out of five posts
were not available at all. In the meantime, they popped up, though.

Cheers,
Simon

[Simon King]

Hi Harald,

On 19 Mrz., 22:03, Harald Schilly <harald.schi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday, March 19, 2012 8:58:20 PM UTC+1, Simon King wrote:
>
> > Why is that? Is the host of our discussion lists perhaps automatically
> > banning certain words, even if people confirm that everything is OK?
>
> what you try to imply or infer is not true, but there is an automatic spam
> protection - probably very similar to gmail's spam filter.
> but you never ever see those messages

Then we have a different notion of "being marked as spam". What I
meant was: One could see that there was a post (Ravi's question), but
one needed to confirm that one really wants to read it.

> my only explanation is that someone
> marked it as spam.

Reading Ravi's post, I can only guess that that happened unintended.
However: When the post was hidden in the first place, I and others
confirmed that the post was OK; but after a few hours, the post was
hidden AGAIN. In other words, the "accident" happened at least twice
with the same post, which makes me not believe in an accident. Also,
the fact that in the same day in a related thread on sage-devel
several messages were not available at all seems fishy to me.

Anyway. I think concerning changing the platform, one must not forget
the other points: 1) The general look of the new groups is ugly (yes,
one shouldn't argue about taste, and it's painting a bike shed...). 2)
The editor that is part of the new groups is broken -- at least for
me.

On sage-devel, Keshav mentioned that there even is an Emacs mode to
work with Gmane lists - which makes me wonder whether the Sage
notebook could be provided with a way to read and post on the sage-
related lists, with a less broken editor.

Cheers,
Simon

[Simon King]

Hi!

On 20 Mrz., 06:48, Simon King <simon.k...@uni-jena.de> wrote:
> On 19 Mrz., 21:16, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I saw your message, looked, and marked it not spam, and now it is not
> > hidden.
>
> For the record: I was not talking about a message of mine, but was
> talking about the original message in the thread I cited, which was
> from a user called Ravi.

I just saw that the sage-support thread initiated by Ravi is AGAIN
(now for the THIRD TIME at least) hidden. Instead of the thread title,
I read the mesage "Dieses Thema wurde ausgeblendet, weil es als
missbräuchlich gekennzeichnet wurde", which in English means something
like "This topic is hidden, because it was marked as abusive/
improper."

Can the group administrators please find out, *how* it was marked as
abusive? I mean: Was it marked by another user, or was the mark due to
an automatic moderation tool? I think we must not tolerate an
automatic moderation tool doing those decisions - because the
*decision* was abusive, not Ravi's post.

Cheers,
Simon

[Harald Schilly]

yes, the editor isn't perfect, but this will improve.

just curious, which version of firefox are you using?

h

[Simon King]

Hi Harald,

On 20 Mrz., 12:42, Harald Schilly <harald.schi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> yes, the editor isn't perfect, but this will improve.

As long as it isn't of the same quality as a *benevolent* human, I
wouldn't like to be subject (i.e., guinea pig) to such automatic
editor.

> just curious, which version of firefox are you using?

In my office (where I am now), it is Iceweasel 3.5.16. At the moment I
can't find out what I have on my laptop.

Cheers,
Simon

[Harald Schilly]

On Tuesday, March 20, 2012 2:11:31 PM UTC+1, Simon King wrote:

In my office (where I am now), it is Iceweasel 3.5.16.

I don't know it, but i guess it's based on an old firefox, right? I would recommend you to switch to a browser which is actively supported. On linux you don't have much to fear, but this is also a security problem :-\

h 

[Keshav Kini]

I doubt it. This is not the beta - the new google groups has now gone live, on sage-devel at least. It's been around in beta for a good four months, and I guess they must think that it's now "good enough". I must admit it was much worse earlier though. All kinds of horrific bugs in the javascript - middle-click pasting would break it, typing newlines would shrink it to a negative height, scrolling displaced the box inside another box causing it to become partially hidden... the list goes on and on. Most of those are fixed now, but there are still issues, not to mention the slight lag caused by javascript watching what you type like a hawk. I really wish you could just disable the rich text editor and use a standard <textarea> which is pretty much guaranteed to work properly on all browsers. I don't even want to send HTML emails in the first place. That and the bugginess are what caused me to decide to move to gmane.

(Simon: see my post on sage-devel about what Gmane is and is not, by the way.)

-Keshav

[Keshav Kini]

Iceweasel x.y.z is Firefox x.y.z with branding (i.e. the name, icons, logos, etc.) changed to something that's freely licensed. The default branding has some rights reserved by Mozilla. Iceweasel is produced by Debian. GNU produces something similar called IceCat.

[leif]

Simon King wrote:
> One could see that there was a post (Ravi's question), but
> one needed to confirm that one really wants to read it.

That was still the case for me yesterday when I tried to look at it.

> Anyway. I think concerning changing the platform, one must not forget
> the other points: 1) The general look of the new groups is ugly

It is. And it's not only ugly, it's inconvenient, at least for our,
i.e., development purposes, IMHO.

-leif

--
() The ASCII Ribbon Campaign
/\ Help Cure HTML E-Mail

[Simon King]

Hi Keshav,

On 20 Mrz., 17:51, Keshav Kini <keshav.k...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I doubt it. This is not the beta - the new google groups has now gone live,
> on sage-devel at least. It's been around in beta for a good four months,
> and I guess they must think that it's now "good enough". I must admit it
> was much worse earlier though. All kinds of horrific bugs in the javascript
> - middle-click pasting would break it, typing newlines would shrink it to a
> negative height, scrolling displaced the box inside another box causing it
> to become partially hidden...

This is exactly what I observed, too. And I did observe it on two
different machines, namely my laptop (with Firefox 10.0.2 on openSuse
12.1) and the computer in my office (with the version of Iceweasel I
mentioned).

So, the javascript problems are clearly not solved yet, at least for
me.

> I really wish you could
> just disable the rich text editor and use a standard <textarea> which is
> pretty much guaranteed to work properly on all browsers.

+1!

> I don't even want
> to send HTML emails in the first place. That and the bugginess are what
> caused me to decide to move to gmane.

+2!

> (Simon: see my post on sage-devel about what Gmane is and is not, by the
> way.)

Thank you for pointing that out. When reading/posting on sage-support,
I am now using http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.mathematics.sage.support

One inconvenience of Gmane: AFAIC, there are only two ways to order
the posts, namely (1) like a blog, so that one does not see the
threads sorted by topic, and (2) by thread, where the threads are
ordered by the time of the *first* post.

Hence, in version (2), an answer to an old thread would not appear on
the first screen and would thus be de facto invisible. But apart from
that, I think Gmane would be good for working.

Or perhaps some of you know whether one can Gmane make to sort the
posts by thread, ordered by the time of the *last* post?

Cheers,
Simon

[leif]

Simon King wrote:
> Thank you for pointing that out. When reading/posting on sage-support,
> I am now using http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.mathematics.sage.support
>
> One inconvenience of Gmane: AFAIC, there are only two ways to order
> the posts, namely (1) like a blog, so that one does not see the
> threads sorted by topic, and (2) by thread, where the threads are
> ordered by the time of the *first* post.
>
> Hence, in version (2), an answer to an old thread would not appear on
> the first screen and would thus be de facto invisible. But apart from
> that, I think Gmane would be good for working.
>
> Or perhaps some of you know whether one can Gmane make to sort the
> posts by thread, ordered by the time of the *last* post?

Well, just take some (threaded) news reader of your choice (there are
plenty) and use NNTP, which should be faster anyway.

There you can switch between different views, hide threads, and order
them by what you want.

Keshav can certainly better recommend some. You can also use
Thunderbird for newsgroups (i.e., NNTP).

[Keshav Kini]

Right, exactly. I would recommend using Gmane through NNTP, which is I guess its main useful feature. The web interfaces are just conveniences, especially for linking people to posts - there isn't really such a thing as an nntp:// link to an individual post since the original specification for newsgroups assumed that articles would expire and disappear after a medium-to-short time (Gmane, as an archival service, does not let its articles expire, of course).

As Gmane was my first exposure to newsgroups, and I happened to be starting to learn Emacs at the time, I decided to dive in and use Gnus, the newsreader mode which comes with Emacs. It's pretty nice, IMO. Though you might not like it if you're not the type to dive into a random Emacs mode and grapple with its weird key bindings for a little while until you internalize them. I haven't used any other newsreaders so I can't recommend anything else either.

-Keshav

[leif]

Keshav Kini wrote:
> Right, exactly. I would recommend using Gmane through NNTP, which is I
> guess its main useful feature. The web interfaces are just conveniences,
> especially for linking people to posts - there isn't really such a thing
> as an nntp:// link to an individual post since the original
> specification for newsgroups assumed that articles would expire and
> disappear after a medium-to-short time (Gmane, as an archival service,
> does not let its articles expire, of course).

Another disadvantage of NNTP or newsreaders (compared to plain e-mail
with IMAP, or a web interface where [or if] you always login) is that
the state is local, i.e., the information which articles or posts you've
already read etc. is bound to each specific newsreader, and to the
machine it is installed on (or the filesystem where your newsreader
keeps its files).

So it's a bit inconvenient if you frequently read the same groups from
different machines; I don't know whether there are clients between which
you could easily synchronize, probably through "the cloud".

You could of course set up your own NNTP server, and e.g. delete already
read articles from it...

[Keshav Kini]

I guess. I generally try to keep up to date and read articles in approximately the order they are posted, so it's not as big a deal to me - if I'm reading from an unfamiliar machine I'll usually just go to google groups and read the top few topics. And I usually only work on one machine anyway. But I see how that could be a problem. Gnus records that stuff in plaintext lisp s-expressions, so you could probably put it under version control and sling it around if you wanted.

-Keshav

[Harald Schilly]

On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 12:59:27 AM UTC+1, leif wrote:

I don't know whether there are clients between which

you could easily synchronize, ...

You can use IMAP, right? filter all mails from a group into a folder, there you can read and answer them. 

H

[leif]

Well, we were talking about NNTP, or newsreaders.

You could probably do that with (e.g.) Thunderbird, since it also
supports NNTP, but you'd have to (manually?) move articles from your
*local* news folder into a (central) folder on the IMAP server.

Don't know how this works if you do that from different clients (i.e.,
move "new" articles you've already read on another machine into the
central folder).

And I wonder if there would remain any advantage of using NNTP instead
of e-mail for reading newsgroups.

One could perhaps rsync the newsreader files which record which articles
one has already read between different machines (rather than putting
them under revision control, as Keshav suggested), but then one of
course has to use the same client, and perhaps versions that do not
differ much.

All in all not that easy (or convenient) at first glance, but there are
probably some experts [elsewhere] around that know better.

[Harald Schilly]

On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 2:28:29 PM UTC+1, leif wrote:

Well, we were talking about NNTP, or newsreaders.

since we are on sage-flame, you get a unpolite "i am not" from me for that. the basic problem is that some have a problem with reading the lists here. my suggestion is to 

a) turn on email sending

b) use imap to read and post

c) if you don't like the clutter, filter your messages into folders.

d) and yes, imap supports the "\Seen" flag, so it syncs read and delete states without having to resort to rsync local files like you suggested *shrug*

h

[leif]

Harald Schilly wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 2:28:29 PM UTC+1, leif wrote:
>
> Well, we were talking about NNTP, or newsreaders.
>
>
> since we are on sage-flame, you get a unpolite "i am not" from me for
> that.

B)

Yes, but you were replying to my thoughts on NEWSGROUPS and NNTP!!!1!11!

> the basic problem is that some have a problem with reading the
> lists here. my suggestion is to
> a) turn on email sending
> b) use imap to read and post

That's rather unrelated to moving sage-devel etc. to some other service.
(Ok, that's another, but closely related thread on sage-devel.)

I guess *most* people ("already") use the e-mail interface, preferably
using an IMAP account, at least if they happen to read their mails (or
the [news]groups / mailing lists) from different
Telekommunikationsendger�ten (likewise "Rundfunkempfangsger�ten", the
latter not bothering you until Germany takes over Austria again).

> c) if you don't like the clutter, filter your messages into folders.

> d) and yes, imap supports the "\Seen" flag, so it syncs read and delete
> states without having to resort to rsync local files like you suggested
> *shrug*

:-) One should of course automate that.

And again, I was talking about moving articles of an NNTP folder (which
is local) to an IMAP folder (which btw. adds much traffic, depending on
how much you move, and thereby destroys the advantages of NNTP, and
probably significantly grows your volume on the mail server, although
not necessarily more than reading the lists via e-mail anyway).

The latter also of course excludes plain newsreaders from your choice,
which is why I suggested using rsync to synchronize different clients'
data (i.e., that of the same programs installed on different machines).

[Harald Schilly]

thread topic mixup alert!!!

On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 5:16:47 PM UTC+1, leif wrote:

... the

latter not bothering you until Germany takes over Austria again).

i guess you meant to say: all germans follow blindly one insane austrian? :-P

h

[leif]

Harald Schilly wrote:
> thread topic mixup alert!!!

Apparently at least sage-flame doesn't [yet] get censored!

[Bill Hart]

sage-flame is moderated. Posts which score zero flamage points are duly removed.

I am amazed that my posts about how sage should use git (three years ago) have not been removed since they are now too serious for this forum. Admittedly they were mixed with a large quantity of other delirious comments about python being too slow and the like (we now know this is not true because Guido said so).

Bill.

[rjf]

1. This thread seems a gross misuse of sage=flame.

To get it back on topic, I should accuse all you people
of moronic incompetence in thinking that people who think
Sage is poorly designed or implemented by incompetents (etc) give a
fig about whether
Sage-support is censored by a robot.

There, that's at least marginally a flame.

2. I assume that anything posted and not immediately deleted will be
retained more or less indefinitely. e.g. as long as Western
Civilization
has bits to spare.
If someone goes through and revises history, e.g. by deleting old
threads,
that smacks of the novel 1984. Especially deleting someone else's
posts.

RJF

[Bill Hart]

{looks for the +1 button}

[Tom Boothby]

You can stick your +1 button somewhere dark, with the rest of social networking.

[William Stein]

On Wednesday, March 21, 2012, Tom Boothby <tomas....@gmail.com> wrote:
> You can stick your +1 button somewhere dark, with the rest of social networking.
>

+1

--
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

[rjf]

On Mar 21, 8:16 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday, March 21, 2012, Tom Boothby <tomas.boot...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > You can stick your +1 button somewhere dark, with the rest of social
> networking.
>
> +1

OK, now we have descended to schoolyard taunts.

Not really much use..

[leif]

Tom Boothby wrote:
> You can stick your +1 button somewhere dark, with the rest of social networking.

Exactly, or should I say "not at all"?

On sage-flame, we only have -1 buttons.

And don't follow me on Twitter, please.

[Harald Schilly]

On Thursday, March 22, 2012 9:27:43 AM UTC+1, leif wrote:

On sage-flame, we only have -1 buttons.

 

fixed.

[leif]

Harald Schilly wrote:
>
>
> On Thursday, March 22, 2012 9:27:43 AM UTC+1, leif wrote:
>
> On sage-flame, we only have -1 buttons.
>
>

> <http://www.blogotechblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/google-minus-one.jpg>
>
> fixed.

Thanks / why the f*** did you do that?,

although for the purpose of sage-flame, it should be -oo

[Harald Schilly]

Have you noticed that it is some kind of art, that you talk about rewriting history as a reply to removing posts about git, where git in itself has the infamous feature of being able to completely rewrite history (which e.g. makes it possible to entirely remove a file from all earlier revisions.)

On Wednesday, March 21, 2012 11:32:07 PM UTC+1, rjf wrote:

If someone goes through and revises history, e.g. by deleting old
threads,
that smacks of the novel 1984.

On Mar 21, 12:24 pm, Bill Hart <goodwillh...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> I am amazed that my posts about how sage should use git (three years ago)

> have not been removed ...

 

[rjf]

On Mar 22, 4:14 am, Harald Schilly <harald.schi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Have you noticed that it is some kind of art, that you talk about rewriting
> history as a reply to removing posts about git, where git in itself has the
> infamous feature of being able to completely rewrite history (which e.g.
> makes it possible to entirely remove a file from all earlier revisions.)

I've never used git. Though I suppose that if I had, I could deny it
and
remove all evidence that I ever had used it?

I find it disappointing that the spirited repartee on sage-flame could
be
deleted.

On the other hand, the pointlessness of some of the messages is, in my
view,
disappointing.

Sage-flame DOES have a purpose, which is to provide a forum for
critical comments
about Sage.

It is not intended to provide a recording mechanism while people
merely try to pee on
others' shoes.

If you don't know the difference between this abuse and actual
argumentation, you could check
on the Monty Python skit ..

http://www.mindspring.com/~mfpatton/sketch.htm

or for those with excess broadband capacity and a few minutes ..
(recommended if you have not seen it)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

I believe I've pointed to this skit before, but it seems especially
apropos, since
one of the lines is "Stupid git!"
RJF