[Mailman-Users] Re: monthly mailings

[Chuq Von Rospach]

At 1:11 PM -0400 10/2/00, Tom Neff wrote:

>Another tack (don't know which one makes more sense) would be for each
>server to send a monthly reminder to each member of ANY of its hosted lists,
>reminding them of ALL lists that they're a member of.

Fewer messages, but if you attach a hunk-O-text for each list, you 
quickly end up with a huge piece of email, which you can guarantee 
nobody will read.

>That way if you have
>a site hosting a bunch of lists (some seasonal, some temporary, others
>topical etc) you would just get one message per month from that site.  Might
>help at least some people.

There really isn't a good way of doing this. you have the choice of:

1) not sending anything, which causes everyone to post "how do I get 
off this list?" type messages to the list, since they long since 
forgot the instructions.

2) send one message per server (as mailman does today), minus the 
passwords, plus a piece of text per list. That's pretty much 
guaranteed to generate something most users will blow off and not 
bothe reading, but it's less server stress and fewer messages, but it 
ties all of the lists together, which (IMHO) on many sites isn't what 
you want anyway. And -- what about virtual hosts? Are they split? One 
message per vhost? One per each virtual host? What if we extend 
mailman to allow a list to live on multiple hosts? what if you have 
one or two lists that you do NOT want to have these messages sent to? 
Right now, it's all or nothing, and not all sites fit that (mine 
doesn't. I'm going to be creating a list that will likely get 2-3 
postings a QUARTER, and are announcement lists, not discussion lists 
-- but mailman requires they get monthly postings, or none of my 
lists get monthly postings... So these users will likely see more 
admin messages than real messages -- or if I'm really lucky, about 
the same. Not good!)

I really don't like the one-per-server. There are way too many 
environments where it causes problems.

3) send one message per list. Which wll annoy people who are 
sensitive to # of messages sent, but that's a fairly small population 
(smaller than the "reply-to" demanders but larger than the "ID flag 
on the subject line" folks), but allows us to stagger the messages 
over a period of time, and focus each one to the needs of the list.

I dislike (3) least. In general, I'd love to live without these 
messages at all, and the List-foo: headers anda  well-written footer 
text definitely help in that direction, but don't completely solve 
the issue. But if we go with (3), at least we can determine how often 
to send out admin messages or turn it off, based on the list needs, 
not server-wide. Because not all lists are alike...


-- 
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui at plaidworks.com)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq at apple.com)

You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.