dw_maintenance | (no subject)

People getting mail at Gmail are reporting email delays of about an hour. As far as I can figure out, it's because some of our recent changes to our network have wiped out our existing sending reputation with them and made us start building reputation again, and they're refusing all mail on first delivery and making us re-send it. (It's a common spam reduction technique, because spammers don't bother retrying if the first attempt fails.)

There isn't much we can do about it but wait it out until Gmail decides that we're legit senders again, but we'll poke at it and see if there's anything we can do to make the process go faster. (I doubt there will be, though; Gmail is persnickety.) In the meantime, to get comment notification email faster, you can switch your confirmed email to a different provider, or just refresh your on-DW inbox.

EDIT: And people are now letting me know that mail's delayed to other providers, too, which is probably follow-on effects from having to send everything to Gmail at least twice. There isn't a lot we can do about it; I'm sorry about the hassle, folks.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Have we heard any word about this? I know you are trying, but it is starting to get a little old, getting everything on time, then going back to not getting anything. It's not even consistent anymore, the delay.

I know it's frustrating, and I'm really sorry. There isn't anything we can do, though -- it's entirely out of our hands. Gmail is a black box: we get no feedback, no timetable for changes, and no hint as to what's causing the problem. It's frustrating as hell for us just as much as it is for you.

The problem where greylisted mail to Gmail was causing all mail to slow down has mostly stopped being an issue (although it can start up again at any time if the backlog to Gmail gets too large), so if you have another email address available, you might want to confirm that email address on your account and switch to it temporarily. If you forward the mail from that account to your gmail account, you might get mail to your gmail account more quickly: when you forward mail, Gmail thinks it comes from the intermediate sender, and whatever intermediate sender you pick probably isn't on Gmails' greylisting list right now.

Thank you! I will actually give that a try and see if it clears the inconsistency.