[Mailman-Users] question

[John W Baxter]

At 16:40 -0700 1/31/2002, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
>Cynthia Nakagawa wrote:
>
>> Is there any way to disable the password per list.  We do not like to
>>use a password for all the lists.
>
>    Nope, sorry.

Well, there's a way which somewhat works.

1.  Don't advertise the list on the Mailman page.  To be safer, mess up the
web server setup so the list's pages can't work.

2.  Disable the list's monthly reminders.  Hack Mailman to not send the
password with the welcome message.

3.  Provide a web page of your own which generates an email-based subscribe
request when the user clicks your form's subscribe button (whatever you
call it).  In that email, set the password to a known, constant value.
     Hint:  send subject help to listname-request at your.domain (or any
same-version Mailman installation for that matter) to learn the email
format.

4.  Provide an unsubscribe form which generates the mail-based unsubscribe
command, using the password you (think you) know.  (The unsubscribe will
generate a failure for a user who has managed to

Problems:  once your users figure out what's up, you're list is open to the
unsubscribe wars the passwords are intended to help stop, PLUS it is open
to digest vs message wars, no-mail wars, etc.  (By sufficiently messing up
the web server setup, you can force much of that to be done via email.)

But in a smallish, friendly group, it works OK.

  --John (who thinks it's easier to deal with the password fear and
loathing in most cases, and doesn't recommend the above for most
situations:  use a different MLM instead)

-- 
John Baxter   jwblist at olympus.net      Port Ludlow, WA, USA