[Mailman-Developers] Mailman password and administrative reminders

[Barry A. Warsaw]

Here's the problem in a nutshell (if my quick browse of the thread is
correct).

When a user is to get the password reminder, Mailman collates the
passwords for all the lists that the user is on (for that virtual
domain, but let's ignore that).  So one password reminder refers to
potentially several lists.  So which list -owner address (e.g. bounce
detecting addr) should get the bounces?

As I see it, the right solution is the following:

- Mailman has no catch-all address like Majordomo has.  I.e. you can't
  send `help' to mailman@... unless you actually craft a normal
  Mailman list for this addr.  This is bogus, because it just thinks
  it's a normal list, not something special.  Step one of the fix is
  to write scripts that can handle these over-arching addrs.  Then of
  course, we'd make mailman-owner@... the recipient of all the bounced
  password reminders.  The script on the tail of that would Do The
  Right Thing.

- Unfortunately, the correct solution, IMO requires user databases,
  because otherwise you need to cycle through all the lists looking
  for the user address to disable.  Imagine for a moment, hundreds of
  bounces coming back starting at 12:02 the first of every month, each
  one trying to hit every list on your site.  Ouch!

I've been seriously thinking about adding support for the first bullet
for 1.2 (scratching my own itch, doncha know), but I also just want to
start getting the betas out, so it may have to wait.  Harald's got
stuff in the pipeline to support user databases, but that's defiitely
a post 1.2 feature.

If you wanted to play with this stuff in the meantime, you could
implement #1, and see how bad a hit the touch-all-lists approach would
be.

-Barry