[Mailman-Users] Vhosts with Mailman 2.05

[JC Dill]

On 11:02 PM 5/19/01, Darron Froese wrote:
 >On 5/17/01 2:20 AM, "N6REJ" <n6rej at tcsn.net> wrote:
 >
 >> Hello all.
 >> Pardon me for really sounding lame, but I'm having a heck of a time finding
 >> any documentation that explains how to modify mailman so that it will 
answer
 >> for vhosts also.
 >
 >Everything you need has been posted to the list multiple times.

Apparently you assume the person is subscribed to the list, which isn't 
necessarily true (and if you have been subscribed for any length of time 
you would obviously know this because the open nature of this list has been 
a hot topic of discussion in the not-too-distant-past).  Then you assume 
the person has been subscribed for long enough to have seen the question 
pass by, which is pretty likely to be false (or else, why ask the question 
at all?).  Finally, if you think saying "go search the list archives before 
posting" is a good rebuttal to my 2 items above, why don't you try doing it 
yourself and then see if it's an answer?  (Note, the search function has 
been fixed somewhat since I wrote this, but is still flawed in that you 
need specific instructions on how to search to get good results.)  (And 
then think about how a *non-subscriber* is supposed to even know of the 
existence or location of the archives in the first place...)

This list has a lot of traffic problems created by "how people find and 
post to the list".

The first problem is that it's regularly used in place of a FAQ because no 
one has made a FAQ readily available (in the way the list posting address 
is readily available).  Solution?  Link to the FAQ pages before giving out 
the list email address on the mailman website (give out the email address 
only at the bottom of a FAQ TOC page) and link to the FAQ in the readme, 
instead of giving out this address.  <jc waves her hand and offers to help 
compile an official FAQ if using the unofficial FAQs that already exist 
isn't acceptable>

The second problem is that the list archives are not easily or readily 
searchable (recently fixed, somewhat), so if the question isn't a 
"frequently asked" one, but the answer *is* somewhere in the archives, it 
isn't easily found, so we get the question here again.  Solution?  Better 
archive search feature.  Again, link to the "search the archives" page 
first, before giving out the "post to the list" address.

The third problem is that the software itself doesn't clearly encourage 
people to read the FAQs and webpages that already exist before posting to 
this list.  For instance, the excellent website at:

	<http://www.aurora.edu/~ckolar/mailman/>

is found in the readme, but not on the mailman website, while the email 
address for posting to this list is found on the website, in fact it's on 
the website's homepage.  When you install mailman you may install it in a 
different location from where you uncompressed it.  If so, the readme will 
remain where you uncompressed it and NOT be included in the install 
directory, so you will have a harder time *finding* the readme when you are 
poking around in your installed mailman files looking for 
answers.   Solution?  The readme needs to be put with the install files 
when the program is installed, and needs to point to web-accessible 
solutions before giving people an email address to ask that which has 
already been asked, (and answered, and is readily available if we would 
just LINK TO IT and point people to it!).

Finally, since I happen to have a local archive of posts to this list since 
I subscribed, I quickly searched my archive and forwarded 2 posts to the OP 
(including one that was written by Darron and posted to this list a few 
days ago) that will hopefully help get him pointed in the correct 
direction.  See how helpful and easy that was?

jc