[Mailman-Users] umbrella list issues

[James Ashton]

I'm just automating about 50 lists with mailman and, as far as I can tell 
from the documentation and archives of this list, there are problems with 
umbrella lists.  Am I correct in assuming that mailman (as of 2.0.5) doesn't 
treat umbrella lists differently except in the way it addresses reminders to 
the list owner?  If so this would seem to have some major drawbacks:

*  Duplicate emails to members of multiple sub-lists

*  Modification of the subject line and addition of footers by multiple 
lists in a list hierarchy.

*  Requirement to authorise messages to umbrella lists multiple times.

The last one is a real killer for us.  Say I set a 40KB limit for all lists 
and then want to authorise a larger message sent to an overall master list 
which has nearly 30 sub-lists nested up to three levels deep.  It looks to 
me like I'm going to need to authorise the same email 30 times!

I've seen discussion on this subject in this list's archives with a 
suggestion for mailman umbrella lists to properly understand sub-lists.  
This would mean having mailman expanding list membership for umbrella lists 
in a single step rather than just sending email to each of the mailman 
sub-lists.  This would solve all of the above problems.  Has anyone 
implemented this and/or are there plans to integrate this into future 
mailman versions?

--
James Ashton                    VK1XJA                    System Administrator
http://wwwsyseng.anu.edu.au/~jaa             Department of Systems Engineering
Voice +61 2 6125 8675  Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering
FAX   +61 2 6125 8660                           Australian National University
Email James.Ashton at anu.edu.au                      Canberra ACT 0200 Australia