[Mailman-Users] Can list owner set user passwords?

Bruce Best (CRO) bestb at lao.on.ca
Wed Sep 12 19:26:56 CEST 2001


I am managing 12 lists with about 40-60 subscribers per list, which have
recently been migrated from Majordomo to Mailman (due to a change at our
service provider). Many subscribers belong to most or all of the 12 lists.
The mailing lists are hosted by a third-party provider, so we do not have
site administrator privileges.

With Majordomo, we had an HTML form subscription page set up on a private
website that submitted requests via email to Majordomo. Subscribers could
make changes to all their subscriptions by visiting just the one page,
selecting the appropriate radio buttons, entering their email address, and
clicking "submit". 

Now, with Mailman, each user has been assigned a different password for each
list. This means subscribers will soon be getting 12 separate emails with 12
separate passwords, one for each list they are subscribed to, with
instructions pointing to 12 different websites to make changes to their
subscription options. I am not looking forward to the confused calls &
emails we will get when this happens, and would like to make this transition
as transparent as possible for our subscribers (who also happen to be our
clients).

My questions are as follows;

1. Can the requirement for passwords to make subscription changes in Mailman
be turned off altogether? I know it is insecure, but at the moment the
additional security from Majordomo will be nothing but a headache. The lists
are not advertised, and we will probably adjust the current Majordomo
subscription page to Mailman, and remove the server-based subscription
pages.

2. Another solution that would ease the transition considerably is if we
could change it so that each user's password would be the same for all our
lists. Can the list owner set just one password for a particular email
address that would apply to a group of lists?


Thanks. Any constructive suggestions would be welcome.
 
Bruce




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