[Mailman-Users] Moderator forwarding from "announce" list to "talk" list

[Ken Winter]

Here's a second question about how to set up "announce" and "talk" lists for
a neighborhood group.  (For the first question and answer, see
http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/msg59493.html.)  Let's
say the addresses of these are announce at my.group and talk at my.group.  

 

The "announce" list is moderated.  Frequently, the moderator's reason for
rejecting a post is that it is an expression of opinions rather than factual
information, and as such is appropriate to the "talk" list rather than the
"announce" list.  So the goal here is to enable the moderator to reroute the
message from "announce" to "talk".  Many of my users - and those who send
the most inappropriate posts - are not technically savvy and not easily
educated, and I have no control over their email clients or how they are
configured, so a scheme that minimizes the demands on them is essential
here.

 

Here is the only way I have found to forward messages within Mailman: On the
"Posting Held for Approval" form, enter:

 

*	Action:  Reject
*	Additionally, forward this message to:  talk at my.group (check the
check-box)
*	If you reject this post, please explain (optional):  <A custom
message telling the sender where her post has been forwarded>

 

This method presents these problems:

 

1.	The "From:" address of the forwarded message, when it arrives at
talk at my.group, is announce-bounces at my.group, rather than the original
sender.  So replies to the "talk" message will go back to
announce-bounces at my.group (which sends a useless "Uncaught bounce
notification" message back to the moderator), whereas the need to go back to
the sender.  So the question here is: How to set the "From:" (or
"Reply-To:") address of the forwarded message to the address of the original
sender?
2.	When the forwarded message shows up in a "talk" member's mailbox,
its Subject: line is always "Forward of moderated message".  Every word of
that headline is going to be meaningless to my non-techy users!  The need
here is to put the original sender's original headline in the "Subject:"
line of the forwarded message.
3.	In Outlook (2002), the body shows up as an attachment; either the
header or the footer shows up as the message body.  My non-techy users have
barely mastered opening attachments, even when the body of the message
refers to them; they're never going to find the body if it's hidden in an
attachment.  Gmail presents the message OK.  These are the only two clients
I've tried.
4.	If the first three problems can't be solved, a fallback possibility
would be just to reject the message from announce, and put into the
rejection message the suggestion that the user resend the message to
talk at my.group.  This would work much better for my non-tech users if their
original message were attached to the rejection message, so they could just
open the attachment and forward it to the suggested address.  This would at
least spare them from having to search in their "sent items" folder for the
message to resend.

 

In short:  The requirement here is to get inappropriate messages to
"announce" forwarded to "talk" in such a way that the original sender's
address and subject line appear in the "From:" and "Subject:" fields,
respectively - and to do this in a way that minimizes the skills required of
my user community.

 

~ Thanks in advance

~ Ken