[Mailman-Developers] confirmations/approval of subscriptions

[John Viega]

On Sat, Oct 10, 1998 at 01:47:16PM -0400, Scott wrote:
> 
> currently, things are a little weird with the setup for
> confirmations/approval of subscription.   particularly, there is an
> option on the privacy admin page that allows admins to set web based
> subscriptions without any approval whatsoever, but it doesn't
> work. Also, the confirmation mechanism is invoked even when
> subscriptions need approval.  

Yeah, that option worked before the current confirmation system went
in, but it doesn't work at all now.

> 1) KISS - web based subscription and email based subscription should
> act identical to each other -- meaning that there would be only one
> set of configuration options for the admin instead of two.

That's probably fine...

> 
> 2) all subscriptions that don't need to undergo administrative approval
> should go through the confirmation step.  Supscriptions that do need
> administrative approval should not need to go through a confirmation
> step. 
> 
> If people (other than malicious users ;) want for some reason to have
> the option of completely open subscription (without confirmation or
> admin approval), then there should be a site configuration variable
> that determines whether or not completely open subscriptions can take
> place.
> 
> the purpose behind this last idea is to allow site admins to
> completely disable the possibility of mass subscribes without the
> consent of the subscriber (this happens quite frequently at a
> majordomo site i administor).
> 

I agree with you, however, I know that some people think the confirm
step is an extreme inconvenience, and for pretty tiny lists, generally
they are right.  So I don't want to see it impossible to get rid of
the confirmation step.  

BTW, Another thing some users have suggested to me is a web-based form
where they can type in their confirmation number.  It'd be better to
point to a URL than to say, "send mail to xxx", because there tend to
be a lot of misfires to the mailing list proper.  I don't see why so
many people can't follow the instruction that says, "you can just
reply to this message", but hey...

Another consideration is that sometimes the admin has a good reason
for mass-subscribing people.  For example, I have a lot of friends in
bands, and they collect email addresses at shows for their
announcement lists.  Some of them don't even want people to be hassled
with a welcome message, because the more mail some people get, the
less happy they are about hearing from your band.  So another thing
I'd like to keep around is giving the admin the ability to subsribe
people, with or without sending the people welcome messages.

John