On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 16:54:32 PM -0800, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: > That's an interesting solution. Especially that it can be done by a > side-car server that essentially receives the mailing list and > reforwards messages as needed.
yes, this is a good synthesis. > Have you ever seen this done? I am sure there are some interesting > edge cases that would come up and need to be added to the cases. first, never mind corner cases. To begin with, this is a voluntary service without signed obligations of 5 nines reliability. Then, even if there are and some of them remain unserved, the overall result will still be immensely more efficient and less embarrassing than any "community practice". second, I HAVE been doing the core part of this for years, see http://freesoftware.zona-m.net/how-ignore-uninteresting-threads-in-mailing-lists/ I can do what's in that page exactly because procmail, if set up in that way, CAN recognize all the replies to a specific message and take action accordingly. Change in that page "ignore uninteresting threads" with "send copies to OP of all threads started by non-subscribed OP" and you have (most of) it. The biggest obstacle is human. People need to accept that what they've proposed and done for years was completely idiotic to begin with, and force themselves to not do it anymore. Ever. Due to the fact that, as they themselves agreed publically, many times: 1) There is no single reliable way to mark messages _before_ they enter the lists because that can happen in many ways, varying over time (gmane etc). 2) Even IF it existed, recognizing those marks depends on what email client or newsgroup reader one uses to read and answer ooo list email => manually write and keep constantly updated a guide-to-recognize-unsubscribed-users and force volunteers to follow it. the absolutely obvious consequence of 1 and 2 is that you must and can act only AFTER a message has been posted. See if its sender is in the subscribers list, if it isn't, act. Automatically. oh, and have you realized that, once set up, the whole thing would continue to work even if: - the mailing software completely changed, as long as the autoresponder continued to have an update copy of the subscribers list - none of the moderators knew that it exists or how it works? asking unpaid volunteers to do extra work by hand when a computer can do it better than them isn't community practice, is community embarrassment. Marco -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] For additional commands send email to [email protected] with Subject: help
