[Mailman-Developers] Approach for plugin ideas

[Abhilash Raj]

Hi Aanand,

On 23 February 2015 at 17:11, Aanand Shekhar Roy <2013001 at iiitdmj.ac.in> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> This is my approach for plug-in ideas :
>
> BANNED WORDS:
> 1. We create a common set of words that are to be banned in a mail.

How do you create such a list, who decides which words are banned?
Will this list be list specific or global to one mailman installation?
Would it be possible to add/remove words from these lists from postorius?

> 2. In list settings we create an option for list admin to choose action
> taken if a mail has banned words.

What according to you should be sane default for this? Is is possible that
the banned words be removed or replaced with ****** and the mail be sent to
the list so as to ease the life of list-admins?

> 3. We need to create a new rule in mailman/src/mailman/rules that checks
> for banned words in a msg string.

When you mention url relative to a project, you don't need to add the name of
the root directory. Like 'mailman/src/mailman/rules' should be
'src/mailman/rules/'.
Also, include them inside quotes to differentiate it from normal text.

> 4. This rule is to be implemented in mailman/src/mailman/chains/builtin.py
> where it takes the action as chosen by list admin and then the control is
> passed further depending on the action taken.
>
> CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION CHECK:
> 1. We need to create another rule which check for confidential info. like
> phone no and address credit card no. using regexp search.

How do you do that check? How can you differentiate any number from
phone number,
 or credit card number? (Using reg-ex, yes, but what would the rules be?)
Why is address a confidential information and how do you actually decide what
level of confidentiality you want to maintain? Will that be
configurable per-list or
globally in a mailman installation?

> 2. If found we hold that message, and then we send an auto-reply to sender
> asking for confirmation if he
> intends to post such information.
> 3. This system works similar to the mail-back verification procedure
> during confirmation of email while subscribing where potential
> subscriber's reply decides the further action to be taken.

How will you parse the response of the sender, will there be a
pre-defined format
like email commands in mailman? Will you provide option in postorius too for the
same? If yes, how?

> 4.Based on the user's response the held message will be processed further.

Where will the message be stored while mailman waits for the reply
from the sender?
Will there be a timeout for response after which the email will automatically be
rejected (or discarded? ) or will mailman wait forever for the
response? If you plan
to timeout what would be default value?

> TIMED VACATION:
>  In  member's preference form we already have an option for enabling and
> disabling mail delivery. We can
> extend it to another option called "Vacation period" which takes the
> duration of vacation and disables receiving emails and
> automatically enables mails after the vacation period ends.

This project is about *plugins* and not extending core to do such things.
Once it is decided what and how the filtering is to be done, its fairly easy to
write a  rule. What you need to figure out is how to actually add this as an
optional plug-in to mailman. If you make the options configurable by list-admin
 you would need to add options in postorius as well, again as a plug-in.

Have you read if mailman supports plug-ins at all right now? If yes, how? If no,
how will you do that? You have suggested 4 ideas for plugins, but I
think it would
be better if you choose any two of them which you can best implement in the time
frame given to you. In case you finish early, you can extend your
project and create
more plugins.

I hope my questions help you figure out the minute details of your project.

thanks,
Abhilash