[Mailman-Developers] Discussion On Project Idea "Preset List Settings Templates" .

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Harshit Bansal writes:

 > I think the "Permissions Systems" would have nothing to do with the
 > core. It would be related to Postorius. We will have to create a style
 > model separately in Postorius which would store the style name and the
 > user who created it. Then only the user who has created the style
 > would be granted the permission to edit it.

Then there is no *permissions* system!  For example, one project last
year created a Javascript client -- that would completely bypass the
"permissions" system as you describe it.  You could imagine that style
changes are a "friendly users" feature, and so the "style owner"
system would be a *safety* feature of the Postorius UI rather than an
*authorization* feature of styles.  But in an enterprise context (eg,
a virtual hosting service), I'm sure that users will think of it as an
authorization system.  While at present it seems unlikely that there
would be multiple interfaces on one hosting service, you never know
what users will do[1].  Also, it would not be obvious to somebody who
installed the node.js Mailman client that they are likely bypassing
"security" as documented in the typical Mailman manuals and tutorials
that you would find on the web.

 > From UI point of view, there is one more feature that comes to my mind:
 > When the users are presented with an interface to customize the style,
 > we could provide them with two views, one 'simple' and another
 > 'advanced'. The 'simple' one would show only the *frequently* (or most
 > commonly) changed attributes while the 'advanced' one will show all
 > the attributes. This will help them in customizing the styles.
 > I would like to hear some of your comments on it as well.

Doing this well is a hard problem.  It seems to me that it is likely
that the "frequently changed attributes" will differ depending on the
base style.  Also, there's a "self-fulfilling prophecy" aspect: the
attributes that don't make it to the "simple" view will be less
discoverable, and of course they will be less frequently tweaked.

How about a "pluggable" page?  Ie, where site or domain admins can set
a list of items, which can be either a string (explanatory comment) or
a widget (a UI object permitting customization of one attribute or
perhaps a container for customizing several related attributes).  I
suspect you'll find that the current pages are already factored so
that it won't be too hard to accomplish this.  Of course we would
provide some initial lists that we think are good.

I think the time has come to think about adding feedback on our UI to
the UI.  Of course we won't do it behind the admin's back, nor default
it on, and we would allow admins to configure the information to be
sent.  But I think our user base would be pretty enthusiastic about
contributing things like customized UIs and list styles.

Footnotes:
[1] The Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions
of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables,
the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/15/and-now-the-scientists-will-do/
I think I've seen this attached to a person's name, and it would have
been in the early '70s, so predating the Usenet post.