Re: Mailman pointers?

Greg Merritt <gmerritt_at_berkeley.edu> writes:

> James, thanks for all of the background & context information, and for
> entertaining the possibility of adding some of these features.
>
> I can see where CalMail is coming from regarding compromised accounts
> vs. unconfirmed subscriptions. I imagine that the potential liability
> is pretty serious.
>
> On the flip side, from the department perspective, the sub-by-
> invitation-only seems to be a case where policy is cutting against
> real-world business needs. It seems that forced-subscription e-mail
> lists are used centrally at Cal for official University communication,
> and we do the same in departments. The old Majordomo system let us do
> this, but the new Mailman system has crippled this business function.

Thanks to you and others for your very clear and helpful explanations
of why direct subscription by list administrators is needed. We had
hoped that an invitation only policy would benefit all by ensuring
that users do not receive unwanted mail, and prevent abuse of the
system. But the needs that were presented to us are very compelling,
and it's clear that the CalMail list service is better with that
feature.

The ability for list administrators to directly subscribe addresses is
now available in production. You can access it under the "Add
Subscribers" link in "Manage Your Mailing Lists".

I encourage people to use the invitation feature whenever feasible, so
that users are aware of their subscription to mailing lists, and can
consent to be on those lists.

I'd also like to respond to another portion of the thread here:

Tom Holub wrote:
> Graham Patterson wrote:
>> One interesting quirk that we have discovered is that Majordomo did
>> not distinguish between @berkeley, @uclink.berkeley, @uclink4.berkeley
>> etc. Mailman really wants the list message to originate from exactly
>> the same address as the list subscription.
>>
>> We just need to have people re-subscribe, obviously, but it caught a
>> few people by surprise to be told they were no longer list members
>> yesterday afternoon.
>
> Ah, that's kind of a significant problem, I'd say. I'd like to see
> CalMail either tweak Mailman to accept those addresses as equivalent, or
> else do a batch update of the mailing lists so all the equivalent
> addresses are listed as @Berkeley.edu. (Tweaking would be preferable,
> because updating the lists will break it for people who are still using
> one of the other addresses as their From:).

Our installation of Majordomo was customized to account for the
equivalency of several uclink domains. It was not our intention to
break this compatibility with Mailman, and I agree we should find a
way to address it. We have begun looking into options and will keep
you updated on our progress. I understand that this problem is urgent
and that a solution needs to come quickly.

James E. Blair
Principal Email Systems Administrator
UC Berkeley - IST

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Received on Wed Dec 05 2007 - 18:36:13 PST