[Mailman-Developers] RE: approve and add user

[Tom Neff]

Christopher Kolar <ckolar@admin.aurora.edu> wrote:
> Yes, I know this is late.  I had some non-member postings this morning on
> one of my lists and it occurred to me that it would be nice if there were
> an additional action available: "approve and add user" -- though
> I have not
> figured out if it would be better to add the user as a subscriber
> or to add
> the user to the implicit approval list.

It would be best to have the option of which kind of add to do when you do
it.

Actually I am not a fan of adding "users" for these aliases, nor of adding
them to an independent "flat" approval list, because (a) all they are is
aliases, which shouldn't be allocated the same resources as a real user, and
(b) when the user really does disappear, the aliases ought to go with them.

The best solution would be to associate an array of aliases and/or alias
regexps WITH a real user.  (a) The user could be given some
friendly-formatted checkboxes and/or text fields on their profile to
indicate other places or known addresses that they post from, but just as
importantly, (b) when an admin sees a non-member message, she or he could
[i] search for a matching user and [ii] opt to associate the new address
with that user as an exact alias, or as a "smart" regexp.

So let's say a non-member message arrives from

	tom_neff@mail3.grassyhill.org

Mailman could, at the admin's request, do a "smart search" and pop up a
selection list saying

	* ADD A MEMBER ALIAS *

	We found these possible member matches:

		( ) tom_neff@dismal.com
		( ) tneff@grassyhill.org
		( ) edjones@grassyhill.org

	Select one or enter another member: ________________

	This new alias for the selected member will be:

		( ) An exact match:		tom_neff@mail3.grassyhill.org
		( ) A "smart host" match: 	tom_neff@(.+\.)?grassyhill.org

		Or enter your own match expression: ____________________

		[ADD ALIAS] [RESET] [CANCEL]

If you took this approach, managing peripatetic members and capricious
institutional postmasters would be a snap.