Mailman 3 April 1998 - Mailman-Developers

Re: [Mailman-developers] Subject line, Re:, subject prefix (a small patch)
by John Viega 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

> On Mon, 27 Apr 1998, John Viega wrote: > > > One thing I've seen some mailers do which I have considered for mailman > > is to collapse Re: Re: into Re[2]: and Re: Re[n]: into Re[n+1]:. > > My feeling still is pretty soundly that mailman should do minimal > messing with the subject line. It makes sense for it to introduce the > prefix, and avoid duplicating it if already there - that seems clearly > within the purview of the mailing list. It clearly should not introduce > any "Re"s of it's own, and it i do not think it should mess with "Re"s > that users introduce. It may be the user's mailer is fucked, and adding > re's when it shouldn't - but it doesn't seem to me to be mailman's place > to rectify that. > > Ken To a degree I agree. However, I've been asked for such a feature many times, mainly by people who have mailers that don't thread on their own. If you change Re: to Re[1]: then you'll generally always get an extra Re and will update things properly. That having been said, I guess I'm inclined to agree that it shouldn't be there anyway.

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Re: [Mailman-developers] Subject line, Re:, subject prefix (a small patch)
by Janne Sinkkonen 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

John Viega <jtv2j(a)cs.virginia.edu> writes: > One thing I've seen some mailers do which I have considered for mailman > is to collapse Re: Re: into Re[2]: and Re: Re[n]: into Re[n+1]:. > > Any thoughts? Sounds acceptable, except that the MUA's threading by Re: could be incapable to resolve these. -- Janne

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Re: [Mailman-developers] Subject line, Re:, subject prefix (a small patch)
by Janne Sinkkonen 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

Ken Manheimer <klm(a)cnri.reston.va.us> writes: > Janne, can you recap your current thinking about the right thing to do > about the "Re:" handling w.r.t. the subject line prefix? I gather we > don't want to move the "Re:" to after the prefix, because it will > interfere with some MUA's thread recognition - and given that, i don't > see what more there is to be done... I agree now that Re: should be in front of the prefix, just because of MUA's threading by the Subject: header. However, one Re: seems to be enough, in the sense that nobody (out of 600) on my list has required several Re:'s. Maybe the MUAs do only one-level threading? Some MUAs add a Re: without caring any existing Re:'s. In addition, it seems like some other MUAs (or subscribers) remove the prefix and everything before it, and add a RE:, maybe without caring about any existing Re:'s. What's happening is not completely clear to me, but anyway the result is that in longer threads I see subject lines like Re: Re: PREFIX: RE: Re: So what is this all about? This was with majordomo. When I run mailman with my patch, which does if not subj: msg.SetHeader('Subject', '%s(no subject)' % prefix) else: if re.match("(re:? *)*" + re.escape(prefix), subj, re.I): # The subject prefix is there already, possibly with some Re:'s. # Take the extra Re:'s away, leave one before the prefix_mess_rx=re.compile('^(re:? *)*' + re.escape(prefix) + '(re:? *)*', re.I) subj=re.sub(prefix_mess_rx, 'Re: ' + prefix, subj) else: # No prefix yet. subj=prefix+subj msg.SetHeader('Subject', subj) things seem much better. Now I have only three kind of subject lines: PREFIX: So what is this all about? Re: PREFIX: So what is this all about? PREFIX: RE: So what is this all about? As I said, I'm not sure how the third version appears. My proposal is that roughly the following should be done to the Subject line: 1. Remove extra Re:'s, case-insensitively, both before and after the possible prefix. Leave one Re: if there were any. 2. The prefix should appear after the Re:, or first on the line if there aren't any Re:'s. -- Janne

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Re: [Mailman-developers] Re: [meta-sig] mailman problems
by John Viega 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

> > >>>>> "KM" == Ken Manheimer <klm(a)cnri.reston.va.us> writes: > > KM> While i'm inclined to agree about the list-of-known-domains > KM> check being too maintenance intensive, i do see a reason to > KM> have the check in the first place. The benefit comes into > KM> play when the web interface is in play - the user is there, > KM> and can get definite feedback about faulty addresses. Without > KM> it, they only see address failures as the absence of any > KM> subscription confirmation - a decidedly vague and uncertain > KM> kind of feedback. > > Couldn't we do the same sort of DNS lookup when the form is submitted? Well, you can, but that would have a few problems of its own: 1) DNS lookup can be slow. People want instant feedback. 2) Sometimes DNS is flakey, and you might reject a perfectly valid email address. Sendmail will just keep it in a queue and try again periodically, so if it is a transient problem, then no problem. I would say that perhaps the list of domains *should* stay, but not be a requirement. How about, the list gets checked, and gives you a warning but not a fatal error if your address doesn't have one of the listed endings?

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Re: [Mailman-developers] Re: [meta-sig] mailman problems
by John Viega 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

> "John Viega" <jtv2j(a)cs.virginia.edu> wrote: > > 1) DNS lookup can be slow. People want instant feedback. > > People also want correct operation. Seriously, how long can a DNS lookup > take? We're talking about subscribing to a mailing list. This is not an > operation one does dozens of times a day. If it takes an extra 15 seconds, > who cares? I've seen it take several minutes when a DNS server is quite loaded. I frequently see lookups that take 10-20 seconds. The vast majority of users are typing in the correct thing anyway, and don't want to have to wait around. I'd prefer to catch the most common stuff, and give a speedy response saying, "If you don't get mail from us soon, try again, because we couldn't send mail to your address".

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Re: [Mailman-developers] Re: [meta-sig] mailman problems
by Roy Smith 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

"John Viega" <jtv2j(a)cs.virginia.edu> wrote: > 1) DNS lookup can be slow. People want instant feedback. People also want correct operation. Seriously, how long can a DNS lookup take? We're talking about subscribing to a mailing list. This is not an operation one does dozens of times a day. If it takes an extra 15 seconds, who cares? > I would say that perhaps the list of domains *should* stay, but not be > a requirement. How about, the list gets checked, and gives you a > warning but not a fatal error if your address doesn't have one of the > listed endings? By saying you are going to build a file with the names of the top-level domains in it, you are essentially saying you are going to build your own manually maintained DNS cache. Well, DNS already does cacheing. What makes you think you can do a better job of it? If your DNS cache doesn't already have "edu", "com", etc in it, something is very strange. If you seriously only want to check top-level domains (a procedure which have dubious value), you can do it just as well by looking the top-level domain up in the DNS. Roy Smith <roy(a)popmail.med.nyu.edu> New York University School of Medicine 550 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

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Re: [meta-sig] mailman problems
by Ken Manheimer 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

On Thu, 23 Apr 1998, Dmitry Khrustalev wrote: > Can the person responsible for python.org mailing lists fix mailman so it > will understand .su TLD (add "su" to valid_toplevels at > modules/mm_utils.py line 16)? > > I tried contacting postmaster(a)python.org and mailman list, but have not > heard back for several weeks. I've added it in. Sorry about the non-acknowledgement of your pleas for help - looking back through my inbox i see that your complaints arrived here last wednesday, the fifteenth, just when i left for around a week vacation - and i hadn't gotten to them when i returned. My apologies for missing it. Furthermore, i do have some questions about the strategy of qualifying registration addresses according to matches against a static list of known top level domains - i'd be interested to hear input about this on the mailman-developers list... Finally, dmitry, thanks for going so far as to track down the specific changes that needed to be done - that was beyond the call of duty. Sorry that this got in the way of participating in the python.org mailing lists! Ken Manheimer klm(a)python.org 703 620-8990 x268 (orporation for National Research |nitiatives # If you appreciate Python, consider joining the PSA! # # <http://www.python.org/psa/>. #

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Bug: includes Reply-To in administrative messages
by Janne Sinkkonen 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

If the 'reply to list' option is set, mailman seems to put an erroneous 'Reply-To:' header into administrative messages as well, for example to reminders to administrators about pending messages. (Then the administrators discuss what to do, and the discussion goes to the list.) -- Janne Sinkkonen <janne(a)iki.fi> <URL: http://www.iki.fi/~janne/ >

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Re: [Mailman-developers] forwarded message from Andrew Kuchling
by Janne Sinkkonen 27 Apr '98

27 Apr '98

Ken Manheimer <klm(a)python.org> writes: > It looks like there may be a problem, or at least some sendmail > (8.8.8) sensitivities, in the way that mailman is mime-encoding the > digests. I have also received reports of 8.8.8 dumping core (probably) due to MIME digests. Some other mailers complain about the number of attachments. Over 20 seems to be too much for them. -- Janne

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Re: [Mailman-developers] what to do with confirmation of web based subscriptions
by Roy Smith 24 Apr '98

24 Apr '98

Scott <scott(a)chronis.icgroup.com> wrote: > if someone sends a request via mail to subscribe to a list > without requesting that an address other than the sending address be > subscribed, maybe that should be allowed sans confirmation. it would > still be possible to do mass prank subscriptions, but much more > difficult. Spoofing return addresses is trivial.

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