[Mailman-Developers] Opening up a few can o' worms here...

[J C Lawrence]

On Tue, 16 Jul 2002 17:37:45 -0400 
Barry A Warsaw <barry@zope.com> wrote:

> We'd obviously have to get rid of the easy access to the raw mbox
> file, so another question is whether that's still useful.
> Occasionally it's damn handy if you're moving a list or gathering
> statistics on it, but on the other hand, it's a rich source of
> addresses to mine.  

I don't supply mboxes (or any other raw form of my archives).  Providing
mboxes or some other off-line form of the archives is the most common
archive-related request I receive.

> Also, what heuristic do you use to search for email addresses, and
> what do you scrub them with?  Do you want to attempt to obscure the
> address (e.g. "barry--at--python--dot--org") or replace it altogether
> (e.g. "[hidden email address]"), or maybe just replace it with a
> truncation (e.g. "[localpart's email address]").

Long term I think dated addresses and/or TMDA-style filtering is the
address.

  My main complaint against TMDA is that it doesn't email an alert
  message to me ala, "Bubba tried to email you and I'm holding his
  message pending confirmation."  I'd like to know about held messages,
  or at least be able to trivially know so that I can pro-actively act
  to white-list and let mail thru without the other side having to jump
  thru rude hoops.

> It kind of plays into Reply-To: munging doesn't it?  If you won't be
> able to reply to the original author, because we're anonymizing
> messages, then you might as well munge Reply-To: to go back to the
> list because that's the only posting address that makes sense.  And
> what if the original poster isn't a member of the list?

Address mapping...

> Or should Mailman get into the anonymous resender game?  There's
> probably a lot we could do here, but given the political risks of
> anonymous resenders, do we even want go there?

Date limited address maps.

> Any chance you could make it down to DC for a side trip?  We could
> have a Mailman hacking sprint over a few dozen steamed Maryland blue
> crabs and some cold ones. :)

You might just drag me out to the other coast with offers like that.

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw@kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.