From Chris.Clark at ingres.com  Mon Aug  1 23:25:58 2011
From: Chris.Clark at ingres.com (Chris Clark)
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2011 14:25:58 -0700
Subject: [Mailman-Developers] Documentation location?
Message-ID: <4E3719E6.7040205@ingres.com>

Where is the source of the Mailman (English) docs?

Today (I thought) I needed to delete a mailing list. I ended up reading 
the docs; and found:

http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-admin/node34.html

tl;dr - its empty.

Through my mis-adventures with mailing list deletions (and the faq entry 
http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4030594 ) I thought 
I'd make a quick change to the docs on Launchpad. But I do not know 
where the docs live. The "doc" directory at lp:mailman/2.1 appears to 
have the generated output not the source (even the .txt files appear to 
be generated).

>From 
http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers at python.org/msg05923.html 
it looks like the docs are (supposed to be) LaTex.

Any pointers?

Thanks!

Chris


From mark at msapiro.net  Mon Aug  1 23:46:39 2011
From: mark at msapiro.net (Mark Sapiro)
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2011 14:46:39 -0700
Subject: [Mailman-Developers] Documentation location?
In-Reply-To: <4E3719E6.7040205@ingres.com>
Message-ID: <PC195201108011446390290a19bbd49@Notebook-09>

Chris Clark wrote

> I thought 
>I'd make a quick change to the docs on Launchpad. But I do not know 
>where the docs live.


<https://code.launchpad.net/~mailman-administrivia/mailman-administrivia/admin>.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan


From terri at zone12.com  Tue Aug  2 00:36:42 2011
From: terri at zone12.com (Terri Oda)
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:36:42 -0400
Subject: [Mailman-Developers] Documentation location?
In-Reply-To: <PC195201108011446390290a19bbd49@Notebook-09>
References: <PC195201108011446390290a19bbd49@Notebook-09>
Message-ID: <4E372A7A.9060306@zone12.com>



Mark Sapiro wrote:
> Chris Clark wrote 
>> I thought 
>> I'd make a quick change to the docs on Launchpad. But I do not know 
>> where the docs live.
> <https://code.launchpad.net/~mailman-administrivia/mailman-administrivia/admin>.

I'm also trying to consolidate more of the documentation so it's 
available in the wiki (with the goal that we can just point people there 
in the future):

http://wiki.list.org/display/DOC/

If you're making a new wiki account, you'll need one of the admins to 
grant you author permission (we had to disable it by default to control 
persistent spam) -- if you send me your wiki name I can get that set up 
for you!

  Terri


From Chris.Clark at ingres.com  Tue Aug  2 02:00:41 2011
From: Chris.Clark at ingres.com (Chris Clark)
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2011 17:00:41 -0700
Subject: [Mailman-Developers] Documentation location?
In-Reply-To: <4E372A7A.9060306@zone12.com>
References: <PC195201108011446390290a19bbd49@Notebook-09>
	<4E372A7A.9060306@zone12.com>
Message-ID: <4E373E29.4070906@ingres.com>

Terri Oda wrote:
>
>
> Mark Sapiro wrote:
>> Chris Clark wrote
>>> I thought I'd make a quick change to the docs on Launchpad. But I do 
>>> not know where the docs live.
>> <https://code.launchpad.net/~mailman-administrivia/mailman-administrivia/admin>. 
>>
>
> I'm also trying to consolidate more of the documentation so it's 
> available in the wiki (with the goal that we can just point people 
> there in the future):
>
> http://wiki.list.org/display/DOC/
>
> If you're making a new wiki account, you'll need one of the admins to 
> grant you author permission (we had to disable it by default to 
> control persistent spam) -- if you send me your wiki name I can get 
> that set up for you!

Following the wiki url above, I can find a link to the "old"/current 
docs at http://www.list.org/docs.html

 From http://www.list.org/docs.html the List Managers link offers 2 options:

1) Chris Kolar's docs (indicated to be out of date)
2) GNU list admin manual,  by [you :-) ] Terri Oda - click through shows 
this as having Barry A. Warsaw as the author. This doc appears to be the 
same one the GNU website has ( 
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-admin/ ).

#2 above has a date of July 8, 2011, http://www.list.org/admins.html 
indicated it as being incomplete (with the implication that is is new).

With Mark's LP link of https://code.launchpad.net/~mailman-administrivia 
I found the file that generates the List Admin manual :-)

So...... what should I edit?

I'm not expecting to be making any huge or ground breaking changes but 
obviously I don't want to spend time on something that might get thrown 
away :-)

I've not read the docs from start-to-finish but from my quick scans they 
seem to have a good chunk of information in already. I like wiki's for 
docs (they are not ideal but they serve a purpose) but they tend to make 
sense when projects are just starting out and have zero docs to start 
with. As there are docs already it seems like sticking with the existing 
ones (and filling them out) would be a good idea. I've not used Tex in a 
very long time so I guess from an easy of use I might prefer the wiki! 
How's that for arguing with myself? :-)

Obviously I'll edit where ever I'm told to, this isn't my project! :-)

To prevent me from prevaricating (and spending time talking about doc 
changes rather than *making* doc updates) here is a quick attempt at the 
content I was planning on adding to the "GNU Mailman - List 
Administration Manual", section "Deleting the Mailing List". It is far 
from complete (it might even be wrong, this is based on observations of 
Mailman 2.1.9) and is in US English.

--------------------

Removing/deleting mailing lists is performed with the command line tool 
"rmlist". rmlist has 2 modes of operating:

   1. Only remove the list from the admin interface. This retains
      archives on file system (that is, postings) but makes the list
      completely inaccessible to users, this removes:
          * The list itself from the web admin interface as well as for
            users of the list
          * List meta data:
                o Name, description, etc.
                o Policies in place (for example, list moderation settings)
                o List members
   2. Like #1 above but also removes the list archives

If list archives are retained (default behavior), the archive files are 
left on the file system. The Mailman administrator can still access the 
archives through web interface (if the URL has been bookmarked) but list 
users (and the list administrator) will not have access unless another 
web service is making the list archives accessible (for example through 
a search engine).

NOTE removing the list completely requires manual editing of the mail 
aliases file, that is, /etc/aliases

Once a list has been removed, it may be re-added with the "newlist" 
command line tool, however all information about the list (for example, 
description and previous members) will be missing. However the archives 
will then be available to all users via the web interface.

It is also possible to allow mailing list removal with the 
option/variable OWNERS_CAN_DELETE_THEIR_OWN_LISTS in mm_cfg.py, by 
default this option is disabled.
--------------------

That last sentence is based on the FAQ entry 
http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4030594 I've no idea 
if is it accurate!

Thanks for the prompt replies (and of course for mailman). I've been a 
user in one form or another (i.e. joining someones list or admin of my 
own) for a while now and it always just-works :-)


Chris


From terri at zone12.com  Tue Aug  2 02:47:00 2011
From: terri at zone12.com (Terri Oda)
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:47:00 -0400
Subject: [Mailman-Developers] Documentation location?
In-Reply-To: <4E373E29.4070906@ingres.com>
References: <PC195201108011446390290a19bbd49@Notebook-09>	<4E372A7A.9060306@zone12.com>
	<4E373E29.4070906@ingres.com>
Message-ID: <4E374904.2020706@zone12.com>

Chris Clark wrote:
 > So...... what should I edit?

Short answer: I prefer the wiki, please!

Long answer:  I used to maintain most of the docs, but a few years back 
I realised my time was going to be limited for an extended period of 
time.  I didn't want to become a bottleneck to finishing them, so I put 
them in the wiki and have been directing people to make changes there 
for the past few years.  In theory, the wiki docs are thus more 
up-to-date than the ones in Launchpad, although the reality is that 
relatively few changes have been made in that time so they're probably 
pretty similar still.  And for all I know, Mark's been updating them and 
I just didn't notice the checkin messages. ;)  But you can look at the 
history of each and determine that yourself!

My *plan* is to remove all the various messy doc links and point 
everyone to the wiki so that they can search through the docs and the 
FAQs all in one place. I just haven't gotten that done yet, since it 
doesn't pay the bills!

  Terri


From Chris.Clark at ingres.com  Tue Aug  2 03:13:15 2011
From: Chris.Clark at ingres.com (Chris Clark)
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:13:15 -0700
Subject: [Mailman-Developers] Documentation location?
In-Reply-To: <4E374904.2020706@zone12.com>
References: <PC195201108011446390290a19bbd49@Notebook-09>	<4E372A7A.9060306@zone12.com>	<4E373E29.4070906@ingres.com>
	<4E374904.2020706@zone12.com>
Message-ID: <4E374F2B.9070704@ingres.com>

Terri Oda wrote:
> Chris Clark wrote:
> > So...... what should I edit?
>
> Short answer: I prefer the wiki, please!

Cool, can you give clach04 auth perms please? I'll add the stuff I wrote 
earlier to a (new) section in 
http://wiki.list.org/display/DOC/Mailman+2.1+List+Administrators+Manual#

> My *plan* is to remove all the various messy doc links and point 
> everyone to the wiki so that they can search through the docs and the 
> FAQs all in one place. I just haven't gotten that done yet, since it 
> doesn't pay the bills!

:-)

Chris