Ian Eiloart wrote:
Well, for some of our lists it's simply inappropriate for users to set preferences.
OK, I can see this. My query/issue is this: as I understand it, completely re-setting the list membership will also reset mailman's memory of who bounces, etc. So if any of the new members were old members with subscription issues, mailman goes through the same rigamarole.
It still seems to me like "set the active membership of the list to this list of email addresses", with existing addresses being retained, non-existent addresses dropped/set nomail, and new ones added, would address your needs without breaking things in the case that other admins use the feature.
Does that sound right/ok?
So, I could implement this another way, but Mailman also offers me authentication and authorisation, and allows me to ensure proper footers on the emails, and probably some other useful stuff too.
What I hear you saying is you would like "one-off" lists; is it important that the list persists? It seems odd, but perhaps what you want, to have lists whose membership entirely changes every n mailings but retains the same email address.
Are there any regularities to the emails you add? e.g. might the set of emails you add after a delete be equivalent to some past set of emails?
I'm just thinking that the example you gave - sending all enquiring students a registration-change notice - is a case where you might want to keep some knowledge of past email addresses to which you had sent notices.
Not that I'm necessarily signing up to implement some "remember past emails" kind of thing, but the feature you want could be implemented by, for example, setting all the emails that don't occur in the most recent set to nomail, rather than just throwing them away.
~ethan