Currently, only the mailing-list owners/moderators can update the status of submitted patchsets via email headers.

I propose allowing patchset authors to modify the status just like owners/maintainers do, but with allowed statuses limited to: SUPERSEDED, and (a new status) RETRACTED.

Use-case for superseded:

• As a contributor, I submit a patchset to a project's mailing list
• Upstream asks me to modify it on a different communication channel, e.g. IRC.
• I submit next version of said patchset
• With proposed change: I mark the previous version superseded via a reply to it with X-Sourcehut-Patchset-Update: SUPERSEDED email header

Use-case for retracted:

• As a contributor, I submit a patchset to a mailing-list
• Some time after the submission, but before the review from upstream, I find that the patchset has some undesired change, and I wish to not bother upstream about the patchset at all.
• With proposed change: I mark the patchset retracted via a reply to it with X-Sourcehut-Patchset-Update: RETRACTED email header
• Note: This can be also done via superseded status, but it requires submission of the newer version of patchset first.

This will lessen the burden of maintaining status of submitted patches on owners/moderators. Something which I find is common for active projects with a lot of external contributions.

Parts of this have been discussed in public mumble meeting of January, 2022.