[Mailman-Users] Privacy Options Filtering

[Mark Sapiro]

On 06/30/2013 12:51 PM, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
> 
> On Jun 3, 2013, at 5:00 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> 
>> On 06/03/2013 03:21 PM, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:

>>> 2) To add a domain name to the list, you have to use a regular expression in this form:
>>> ^[^@]+@(.*\.)?domain\.com$  (or use net, info, etc).
>>> In other words, the only way to actually know that is to be a programmer or to ask on this list and save it for years, as I did.
>>
>>
>> Your regexp is a bit more complicated than it needs to be.
> 
> LOL!  
> 
> Well maybe it is but YOU are the one who told me to use it.  Years ago.  (or possibly someone else on a thread that you contributed to as well)


I'm sure I did, but I learn things over time too.


>> This is equivalent.
>>
>> ^.*[@.]domain\.com$
> 
> Since I just cut and paste the relevant parts, I'm not sure it matters.


It matters in that people looking at the first form say "this is so
complicated I'll never understand it" whereas they can look at the
second and say "Oh yeah, I get that"



>> That's my inclination for the fix. I.e. don't add the address to the
>> filter and say why, but what else should or shouldn't be done. E.g.
>> suppose this is one address out of 5 to be added from 5 posts. Do we
>> abort the whole transaction, do everything else anyway or something in
>> between.
> 
> Ideally it would accept the good addresses and reject the bad one and say which address was rejected and why.  But I would accept a total rejection as a solution if the former one was too much of a PITA to implement.  Even though it might mean repeating a couple minutes worth of work.  One note: the page allows you to discard an attempted post without putting the return address into a filter.  If I don't check a filter button when I discard a message, the message will simply disappear when i save the changes.  My concern is that I might lose the opportunity to add good addresses to the filter if the entire set is rejected.  I typically have 20-30 spam posts when I go through moderation (once a week or so since almost everyone on the mailing list is unmoderated (only newbies and a couple select individuals are on moderation)).
> 
> Another in-between solution might be to reject the "save changes" because there is an error but not partially process the messages or reset the button settings.  Ideally it would say what the error was.  This might be harder to program than the other ways, I don't really know.  My preference would be not to lose my work, however that manifests itself.  But whatever it takes to keep bad addresses out of the filter, that's the most important part.


The bug report is at <https://launchpad.net/bugs/1187201>. The actual
commited fix is at
<http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mailman-coders/mailman/2.1/revision/1390>.

I believe the fix addresses all your concerns. What it does is run each
address to be added to a *_these_nonmembers filter or the ban_list
through Mailman's ValidateEmail() function (a check on form, not actual
deliverability; the same check the web UI uses) and it simply reports
each bad address as bad and does everything as though the bad addresses
weren't selected to be added to a filter or the ban_list.

The reporting can report the same address multiple times as it is
reported for each checked box that references it.

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