[Mailman-Users] Setting up read-only list

Mon Mar 27 09:16:16 CEST 2000

Hmm, perhaps the answer is to do a hybrid of a "roll your own" and a
mailman thing?

By that I mean, let mailman manage your subscriber list, blah blah blah,
but write a few lines of python code which will simply lookup the
subscriber list for a given mailman list and do a massmail to them. I'm
not a mailman source hacker, so I have no idea, but one would assume that
the high level tools are already built in the source of such an
OO-designed thing, such that you'd be able to do something like

<bcc list> = <lookup the subscribers of "foobiz">
<body> = <open and read some input file with today's joke>
<send mail(<from>, <subject>, <body>, <bcc list>)>

Then you stick that in cron. You can still post via the "real" list
mechanism and approve it, which is all good for things like administrivia
or announcing the birth of your son.

Now, if you were planning on maintaining a mailing list archive (like
pipermail or something) this script would need to also file a copy in the
mbox file for the list, using whatever calls the normal mailman delivery
code does.

jim
showing that he's a functional programmer trying to make amends =)

PS Such a contraption would be a great thing for someone to write and
include in Mailman as a "contrib" item of some sort...

On Sat, 25 Mar 2000, Michael E. Fryd wrote:

> >I think I might just use a Perl script, a text file of emails and a cron job
> >for this rather than Mailman....  If you're just going to send an email out
> >once a day seems like Mailman's a bit on the "big" side....The Perl script
> >could even generate an archive of old emails fairly easily.
> >
> >Mark Herzog
> 
> I have about 10 thousand visitors to my web site each day, and have 
> already gotten hundreds of unsolicited requests asking me to set up a 
> list.
> 
> I expect the list to have 5 to 10 thousand members.  With that many 
> subscribers I need automation.
> 
> My goal is to use Mailman to handle:
>   - subscribe/un-subscribe requests via the web
>   - detection and removal of bad addresses (bounced mail)
>   - maintaining the subscriber list and keeping it secret
>   - protecting the subscriber list so that only the official
>     daily messages get sent.
> 
> My thought was to try to use these features from an existing package 
> like Mailman, disabling the features I don't need, rather than 
> building a system from scratch.
> 
> As for archiving, it's a feature I don't need.  I have an existing 
> web site with all the material already available.
> 
> 
> -Michael
> 
> 