[Mailman-Users] List Topics (was: accept_these_nonmembers not working)

[Brad Knowles]

On 12/16/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:

>  When I did a search for a general Mailman support discussion list, I found
>  this one.  If I am wrong about this list's purpose, please tell me!  Is
>  this list mainly for announcing version updates, reporting bugs, and asking
>  for new features?  If so, I'd still stay, because those things interest me.
>  But if there is a better list for the general user "how do I do X?" or
>  "help me troubleshoot Y" questions, let me know and I'll go join it.

In addition to my duties in helping to keep the whole mail system for 
python.org up and running, I am also one of the co-owners/moderators 
of this mailing list, and I am currently the only active 
co-owner/moderator for this list.  No one has explicitly laid out all 
the rules for me as co-owner/moderator, but we have accumulated some 
standard practices over time.

One standard practice is that the core developers should be protected 
from having to answer or participate in any discussions where their 
time could be better spent elsewhere.  Of course, the core developers 
are more than welcome to participate in any discussions that they 
like.  We just try to keep as much stuff off their backs as we can.


Mark is one such core developer.  He's also one of the most prolific 
posters on this mailing list, in part because there are so many 
questions that get asked that I am not able to answer, and so they 
have to fall to someone who knows the code better than I do.  But I 
still try to protect him as much as I can.

Many other questions would have been answered by people who had read 
the appropriate FAQ entries or the archives of the list, although I 
must confess that sometimes people don't know what terms to use when 
searching the FAQ or the archives.


As one of the co-owners/moderators of this list, I would say that 
you're welcome to ask whatever questions on this list that you may 
have regarding the installation, operations, and maintenance of 
Mailman, so long as you can be reasonably sure of a few things:

	1.  The problem you're having is not unique to your particular
		customized non-standard installation.
	2.  The problem you're having is not addressed in the documentation.
	3.  The problem you're having is not addressed in the FAQ.
	4.  The problem you're having is not discussed in the archives.

Note that #1 applies to OS, distribution, or other specific versions 
of Mailman that have been put together by other parties, including 
Apple, Debian, Red Hat, cPanel, Plesk, etc....


If you downloaded and installed Mailman yourself from the source 
tarballs that we provide through the links listed at 
<http://www.list.org/download.html>, then you don't have to worry 
about #1.  If you installed Mailman yourself from a binary package, 
then by definition that did not come from one of our official 
sources, and you may have to worry about #1.  If you installed a 
product from some commercial company that incorporates something they 
call "Mailman", then you almost certainly do have to worry about #1.

If you are a user of a service provided by someone else, and the 
service they provide is called "Mailman", then you may or may not 
need to worry about #1, depending on how that service provider 
installed their software.  Until you can be reasonably certain as to 
what types of problems fall into which categories, you should first 
ask your service provider for support on the services they have 
installed and make available to you.

Keep in mind that even if your service provider does have a 
completely bog-standard installation of Mailman, there's lots of site 
or list administrative tasks that you may want/need to do that may 
require direct privileged access to the Mailman installation, and 
therefore your service provider would almost certainly have to do any 
of those tasks for you.


 From what I've been able to gather, your ISP has made at least some 
customizations of their Mailman installation.  Unfortunately, as a 
user, it can be difficult for you to tell what problems you are 
seeing that are a result from their customized installation, and what 
are a result of standard features within Mailman.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at python.org>
Member of the Python.org Postmaster Team
Co-moderator of mailman-users and mailman-developers mailing lists