[Mailman-Users] Questions about current/future functionality

[Mark Sapiro]

Tanstaafl wrote:
>
>There is currently another (this is probably the 3rd or 4th) discussion
>going on right now on the tdf-discuss list (tdf = The Document
>Foundation, which is hosting all of the libreoffice lists) about issues
>with their list infrastructure...
>
>They are currently using mlmmj, and have said there were very specific
>reasons they decided not to use mailman, namely:
>
>1. The problem with virtual hosting and lists with the same name for
>different vhosts.
>
>This is one of their biggest reasons. I know this will be properly
>addressed in MM3, but that is of course not an option now (how close it
>is, really, to release stage? Months? A year or more?).


Currently, good progress is being made on the core function and the web
UI. As yet, there is no defined migration process for current
installations. I think only Barry is qualified to give an estimate for
the time frame for beta release.


>I guess my main question is, is there a decent page I can point their
>developers to as to how to make this work? Iirc, there are two different
>ways to accomplish this, but they dismissed the idea of having 20 or 30
>multiple instances of mailman...


If they don't want multiple instances and they are really interested in
doing this, they could look at
<https://code.launchpad.net/~msapiro/mailman/vhost>.


>2. Multiple moderators all sharing the same password.
>
>Is it possible for each mod to have a different password? If not, isn't
>this a security issue if you decide to boot a moderator? If not, why not?


No it's not possible. See the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/5YA9>.

The way to "boot" a moderator is to change the moderator password and
only distribute the new password to the moderators you want. Granted
this is not truly secure - no password that is known by more than one
person is truly secure.


>3. Moderation via email is impossible or difficult.
>
>This is their second biggest reason to not use mailman. Is there a web
>page/FAQ that describes how to do this? Is it really that difficult
>(I've never used the email moderator interface).


Accepting or discarding a post by email is not or at least should not
be difficult. Rejecting a post by email is not possible. So I guess
the answer is it depends on what moderator actions you want to support.

For approving or discarding, admin_immed_notify must be Yes, and the
notice to the admin explains what to do. One issue is the instructions
about approving/discarding by mail say "If you reply to this message,
...". That instruction is in an attached message/rfc822 part, and
depending on the moderator's MUA, it may be anywhere fron trivial to
impossible to reply to the message in the message/rfc822 part, and if
you reply to the notice itself, it doesn't work.

The bottom line is you must send your reply to the LIST-request address
and it needs to have the appropriate "confirm xxxxx" subject.


>The reason this is such a big deal is they allow posts from
>non-subscribers, all of which must be moderated.
>
>Also, it would be nice to be able to add a [Moderated] tag to the
>subject if possible, and possibly even inject some bracketed text into
>the message body at the top.


This is more cumbersome. There is a patch somewhere, maybe in the
tracker, that allows editing moderated messages via the web admindb
interface, but not by email.

To edit a moderated message, what I do is edit the message from the
moderator notice, add an Approved: <password> header and remove any
Postfix Delivered-To: headers and "resend" that message and finally
discard the original held message.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan