[Mailman-Developers] Enabling topics with only one topic: can't exclude topic?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Context:

The bzr developers are considering splitting their Mailman list into a
-dev and a -user list, but they don't like that because they feel it
would split their community in an undesirable way.  So the proposal is
to create a [codereview] topic which gets workflow-related posts
(nitty-gritty coding style comments as well as automatically generated
messages from a patch queue manager).  Most users aren't going to be
interested in these, but will be interested in bug reports and their
resolutions, and in design discussions, which will not get an explicit
topic.

So many users would like to select *only* messages *without* explicit
topic.  The quoted post claims that appears to be impossible.  Seems
like a bug to me, either in the topic feature (if it *is* impossible)
or in the page template documenting usage.

John Arbash Meinel writes:
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 > Martin Pool wrote:
 > | I've set up a Mailman topic "codereview", and people can use this to
 > | opt out of getting review related mail.  (Or, if you want, to get only
 > | code reviews, but that would look a bit strange.)
 > |
 > | Messages will be classified into this topic if they have either
 > | [merge] or [codereview] in the Subject, or in a Keywords header, or in
 > | a pseudoheader in the top 5 lines of the message body.
 > |
 > | I have to say that the interface through which users can configure
 > | this is not so obvious and people who want it may not find it.  But,
 > | it's there and we can see how it goes.
 > |
 > | If anyone wants to try it out: go to
 > | <https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/options/bazaar>, enter your address,
 > | and scroll to the bottom of the resulting page.  If it doesn't work as
 > | intended please let me know.
 > |
 > 
 > So, I was reading through the description, and I found this:
 > 
 > | If you do not select any topics of interest, you will get all the messages
 > | sent to the mailing list.
 > 
 > And the description below that is:
 > | Do you want to receive messages that do not match any topic filter?
 > |
 > | This option only takes effect if you've subscribed to at least one
 > topic above.
 > 
 > 
 > So there is a problem. There is no way to say that don't want codereview
 > messages.
 > 
 > You can get *only* codereview by checking the box, and then saying you
 > don't want unmatched messages.
 > 
 > You can get all messages by either not checking codereview, or by
 > checking it and saying you *do* want unmatched messages.
 > 
 > It seems that the only way to get what non-reviewers want, is to have
 > multiple topics, perhaps one as a dummy "ijustwanttodisablecodereview"
 > topic.
 > 
 > Further, I *do* like the idea of sending merge requests directly to BB,
 > and having it forward the messages to the list. I think it could be an
 > optional feature for people who know the BB address. I suppose that I'm
 > a bit concerned with BB's stability if we do implement this. Because if
 > BB goes down, then all of our submissions get circular filed (trashed
 > until bounce, or whatever).
 > 
 > John
 > =:->
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