Re: [Mailman-Users] Questions about current/future functionality

[Mark Sapiro]

Tanstaafl wrote:
>
>So, will MM3 have the ability to assign unique credentials
>(username+password) to admins and moderators?


Yes.


>Is there a way to assign
>unique passwords now for different moderators?


Not without significant code modification.

-- 
Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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Re: [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
.


>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 .

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 x" 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:  header and remove any
Postfix Delivered-To: headers and "resend" that message and finally
discard the original held message.

-- 
Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Attachments AND no-attachments...

[Mark Sapiro]

Richard Troy wrote:
>
>In sum, it would be _fantastic_ if list subscribers have an
>option to receive or not receive attachments on a per-user basis, much as
>users can now elect to recieve digests. But, as that option doesn't appear
>to exist, I was thinking I could facilitate the same effect by using two
>lists - maybe three.
>
>The "obvious" thing seemed to be to create a second list for no
>attachments, have it filter out the attachments, and have the post-to
>address subscribed to the main list - with the reply-to also set, of
>course. This is VERY cumbersome, though, as the people on the no-attach
>list need to be authorized to post on the primary list, and visa versa
>because it wouldn't be welcome to lose the original poster's information
>from the mail header. ...It would be great if any subscribe / unsubscribe
>events could cascade to the other list, but the only way I found how to do
>that is to follow the basic direction on this page:
>
>http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/solutions/umbrella.html


That information appears to have been copied from the FAQ at
. The FAQ has since been updated to
include information about the regular_include_lists feature in more
recent versions of Mailman. At first, I thought that would solve your
issue, but it won't because if for example, you put the no-attachments
list in regular_include_lists of the attachments list, a post to
attachments will go to the members of both lists, but all recipients
will get the attachments because the only content filtering applied
will be that of the attachments list.

So, moving on...

Why not have an attachments list and a no-attachments list with
completely disjoint membership. Make each list a member of the other.
This is not a problem because the X-BeenThere: headers will prevent
loops.

Also, put @attachments in the no-attachments list's
accept_these_nonmembers and vice versa so a member of either list can
post to either list. Also, put the attachments posting address in the
no-attachments list's acceptable_aliases and vice versa.

I don't think you need to mung Reply-To: at all.

Also, you might find the FAQ at  useful.


[...]
>
>Another issue has cropped up, too: I can't seem to get _any_ posts through
>with attachments intact! I think I've screwed the whole thing up with all
>the permutations in trying to get it working at all, that I'll have to
>drop the lists and start over. However, ANY insight into what it is
>exactly that's filtering out, for example, .jpg or .gif images, would be
>very welcome.


What gets filtered depends on content filtering. If you want to allow
anything on the attachments list, just set filter_content to No.

If you want to allow only jpeg and gif images and plain text and HTML
set pass_mime_types to

multipart
text/plain
text/html
image/jpeg
image/gif

and set collapse_alternatives and convert_html_to_plaintext both to No.

If you are trying to do something else, please say specifically what?

If you are trying to understand how content filtering works, please try
to explain what part of the general description on the content
filtering page is unclear.

-- 
Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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[Mailman-Users] Using Mailman to manage a voting process?

[Peter Hitchmough (Twokan)]

Greetings Mailmen -

Please can anyone advise me on the suitability of Mailman (and variants) 
for the following use?


I am investigating approaches to manage a lightweight process to approve 
documents for a shortlist. This process takes place several times a year 
and has 20-30 interested parties and 1 administrator.


A mailing list, particularly managed via Mailman, appeals to me. I have 
glanced briefly at the Vote-MM add-in.


Mailing lists are often used to review things for publication but I 
would like to automate the tracking. features I want to implement include:

- announcement of start, end of voting periods
- announcement of new items for consideration
- collecting Yes and No votes (possibly More Info Please votes)
- announcing final result, including list of items approved

I believe I will have the wherewithal and skills needed to add this to 
my server.


Hope you can advise me...

--
/Peter

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[Mailman-Users] The No Attachments Option

[Richard Troy]

Hello everyone,

Up until now many list participants on a list I manage have been
clammoring for attachments, but in deference to some, we've prevented
them. Now that the server has had its hardware upgraded and a new O/S
installed (Fedora Core 14 with Mailman 2.1.13, and Postfix 2.7.1), I
thought it'd be a good time to solve that problem. In sum, it would be
_fantastic_ if list subscribers have an option to receive or not receive
attachments on a per-user basis, much as users can now elect to recieve
digests. But, as that option doesn't appear to exist, I was thinking I
could facilitate the same effect by using two lists - maybe three.

The "obvious" thing seemed to be to create for the attachment opt-out
crowd a second list that's subscribed like a user to the primary list, so
there's only one post-to address. With the right basic settings - like
reply-to - it can appear as if it's one list for most purposes. However,
this is cumbersome as the people on the no-attach list need to be
authorized to post on the primary list, and visa versa because it wouldn't
be welcome to lose the original poster's information from the mail header.
...It would be great if any subscribe / unsubscribe events could cascade
to the permitted-posters setting for the other list, but the only way I
found how to do that is to follow the basic direction on this page:

http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/solutions/umbrella.html

... in particular the section on "parent-lists" except tailor it to this
circumstance. It's an effective but poor design because a cron-job is a
waste of resources and introduces an ugly time delay - but it's better
than not being able to do it.

While struggling to get this configured - and thinking there has to be a
better way - I seem to have screwed up the configuration somehow as I
can't seem to get _any_ attachments through intact. I think I've screwed
the whole thing up with all the permutations in trying to get it working
at all, that I'll have to drop the lists and start over. However, ANY
insight into what it is exactly that's filtering out, for example, .jpg or
.gif images, would be very welcome.

...It ocurrs to me that the ability to choose to receive or filter out
attachments on a per-user basis would be a grand feature - anyone else?


Thank you so much in advance for your insights, suggestions, etc,
Richard


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[Mailman-Users] Attachments AND no-attachments...

[Richard Troy]

Hello everyone,

I've been using mailman a while, but it's not my primary thing, and I'm a
little lost on how I can configure things to get what I'm looking for. I
strongly suspect that configuring things the right way can accomplish my
goals.

Up until now many list participants have been clammoring for attachments,
but in deference to some, we've prevented them. Now that the server has
had its hardware upgraded and a new O/S installed (Fedora Core 14 with
Mailman 2.1.13, and Postfix 2.7.1), I thought it'd be a good time to solve
that problem. In sum, it would be _fantastic_ if list subscribers have an
option to receive or not receive attachments on a per-user basis, much as
users can now elect to recieve digests. But, as that option doesn't appear
to exist, I was thinking I could facilitate the same effect by using two
lists - maybe three.

The "obvious" thing seemed to be to create a second list for no
attachments, have it filter out the attachments, and have the post-to
address subscribed to the main list - with the reply-to also set, of
course. This is VERY cumbersome, though, as the people on the no-attach
list need to be authorized to post on the primary list, and visa versa
because it wouldn't be welcome to lose the original poster's information
from the mail header. ...It would be great if any subscribe / unsubscribe
events could cascade to the other list, but the only way I found how to do
that is to follow the basic direction on this page:

http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/solutions/umbrella.html

... in particular the section on "parent-lists" except tailor it to this
circumstance. In a word, it sucks, because a cron-job is a waste of
resources and introduces an ugly time delay, but it's better than not
being able to do it.

Another issue has cropped up, too: I can't seem to get _any_ posts through
with attachments intact! I think I've screwed the whole thing up with all
the permutations in trying to get it working at all, that I'll have to
drop the lists and start over. However, ANY insight into what it is
exactly that's filtering out, for example, .jpg or .gif images, would be
very welcome.

...It also seems to me that the ability to choose to reveive or filter out
attachments on a per-user basis would be a grand feature - anyone else?


Thank you so much in advance for your insights, suggestions, etc,
Richard

-- 
Richard Troy, Chief Scientist
Science Tools Corporation
rtroy at ScienceTools.com, http://ScienceTools.com/


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Re: [Mailman-Users] Messages approved never show up on list

[Mark Sapiro]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

>Doug Gaff writes:
>
> > This person is not subscribed to the list. They send a message, and
> > the moderator approves the message, but it never shows up on the
> > list.
>
[...]
>The most probable reason for the discard is that the person violated
>the content rules of the list.  A typical scenario is that (1) they
>post in HTML-only format, (2) the list is set to strip HTML, and (3)
>the message ends up empty of content once the HTML is stripped.
>Without seeing your full configuration, and perhaps a sample message,
>it's hard to say, though.


Not only is auto-discard by content filtering the most likely
explanation, in the case of auto-discard following moderator approval.
it is the only explanation. The other possible auto-discards would
have either occured before the post's being held for moderator
approval or would have been bypassed for an approved post.

-- 
Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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Re: [Mailman-Users] does mailman ever automatically delete an expired email address?

[Larry Stone]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011, Jane Frizzell wrote:


Hello
Does mailman ever delete members from lists automatically for any reason? One 
of the owners of one of our lists (only 1 list seems to have been affected) 
recently reported that he had lost 100 users from his list. They were 
removed, not just marked as nomail. A primary look at some of the names lost. 
show that the addresses were no longer valid email addresses.


Yes, Mailman's bounce processing will do so. The specifics as to how 
many bounces and how long to wait before removing the user can be set by 
the list administrator. I believe bounce processing is on by default.


This is, in general, a good thing as excessive sending to dead addresses 
is a good way to get yourself on some of the anti-spam blacklists.



-- Larry Stone
   lston...@stonejongleux.com
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Re: [Mailman-Users] does mailman ever automatically delete an expiredemail address?

[Mark Sapiro]

Jane Frizzell wrote:

>Does mailman ever delete members from lists automatically for any 
>reason?


Automated bounce processing will do this.


>One of the owners of one of our lists (only 1 list seems to have 
>been affected) recently reported that he had lost 100 users from his 
>list. They were removed, not just marked as nomail.


This could be due to normal bounce processing. They may have been
removed after exhausting notices or immediately upon reaching the
threshold score depending on the list's Bounce processing settings.

Check Mailman's 'bounce' log for more detail on what was done and why.

Also, prior to Mailman 2.1.10 there was a bug in cron/disabled that
could cause list members with stale bounce information to be
disabled/removed if the list's bounce_score_threshold value was
lowered.


>A primary look at 
>some of the names lost. show that the addresses were no longer valid 
>email addresses. The addresses would have expired about 6-8 months ago. 
>The message he got as he was the owner, one message per address was:
>
>- Forwarded message from mailman-boun...@lists.bates.edu -
>Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2011 09:00:05 -0500
>From: mailman-boun...@lists.bates.edu
>Reply-To: mailman-boun...@lists.bates.edu
> Subject: batesbuild unsubscribe notification
>  To: batesbuild-ow...@lists.bates.edu
>
>usern...@bates.edu has been removed from batesbuild.


That's the generic unsubscribe owner notification. It is consistent
with removal by bounce processing.

-- 
Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan

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[Mailman-Users] does mailman ever automatically delete an expired email address?

[Jane Frizzell]

Hello
Does mailman ever delete members from lists automatically for any 
reason? One of the owners of one of our lists (only 1 list seems to have 
been affected) recently reported that he had lost 100 users from his 
list. They were removed, not just marked as nomail. A primary look at 
some of the names lost. show that the addresses were no longer valid 
email addresses. The addresses would have expired about 6-8 months ago. 
The message he got as he was the owner, one message per address was:


- Forwarded message from mailman-boun...@lists.bates.edu -
   Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2011 09:00:05 -0500
   From: mailman-boun...@lists.bates.edu
Reply-To: mailman-boun...@lists.bates.edu
Subject: batesbuild unsubscribe notification
 To: batesbuild-ow...@lists.bates.edu

usern...@bates.edu has been removed from batesbuild.

Thank you.  Jane


--
Jane Frizzell   Network Services Administrator
Bates College Information and Library Services
jfriz...@bates.edu  786-6457110 Russell St

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Questions about current/future functionality

[Tanstaafl]

On 2011-03-10 6:55 AM, Tanstaafl wrote:
> 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?

Wow.. I forgot that access to the moderator pages is controlled by
password only, so having a shared password seems totally insecure to me now.

So, will MM3 have the ability to assign unique credentials
(username+password) to admins and moderators? Is there a way to assign
unique passwords now for different moderators?
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[Mailman-Users] Questions about current/future functionality

[Tanstaafl]

Hello,

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?).

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...

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?

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).

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.

Thanks for any comments/pointers...

Charles
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