On May 10, 2017, at 05:05 PM, John Levine wrote:

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I'm not sure if anyone has followed development of RFC 8058 "Signaling One-Click Functionality for List Email Headers" located at https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc8058.txt and brought this topic up on this list.

Is that something mailman(2|3) should support? To me it looks useful.

I probably need more convincing that it would actually be used out in the field, since there are a lot of email standards that have been ignored (by some tools) for decades. But OTOH, if it's of some utility it doesn't look like it would be difficult in core to support the extra header. We'd need a small bit of REST and db schema/style setting work so that the list itself could be configured for one-click or not, depending on the web u/i being used. (E.g. maybe one-click unsub is supported in Postorius, but other sites might not support it.)

It would certainly make it easier to deal with grumpy gmail users, since gmail does not provide junk button feedback.

Let's call that the Grumpy 800lb Gorilla principle. :)

The disadvantage is that every recipient needs to get a separate copy of each message, because the list and user info has to be encoded in the list-unsubscribe URL. That's been standard in commercial e-mail for a decade, but a lot of discussion list operators still imagine that it's too slow.

For a while now I've thought about changing the defaults to individual personalization (i.e. everyone gets a unique copy, but we don't modify the headers). I think the constraints leading us to no personalization may not be all that prevalent any more, and there's no question that personalization improves the user experience.

-Barry

On 05/10/2017 12:18 PM, John Levine wrote:

In article 20170510133609.61fba76f@subdivisions.wooz.org you write:

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I probably need more convincing that it would actually be used out in the field, ...

Gmail's already implemented it. I'm pretty sure Yahoo is also planning to.

Are you saying Google Groups and maybe Yahoo Groups are adding the headers or their web mail clients are/will be supporting it?

Given that Gmail's web mail client doesn't seem to offer "reply to list" when there's a List-Post: header, the latter seems unlikely.

I have tried one-click unsubscribe in message footers, and this is generally not a good idea because of people unwittingly replying/forwarding a post with their personal link to others and then others unsubscribing the first person thinking they are unsubscribing themselves.

This is a header, so it normally won't be included in a forward or reply, so that issue is moot and makes the RFC 8058 method attractive.

I agree with Barry that personalization is not the big performance hit it once was, but there are admins that don't want to enable Mailman's VERP or allow personalization because they think it is. In MM 2.1 at least, we could avoid that issue by only adding the personalized unsubscribe link if the delivery were already personalized or VERPed.

I'm still concerned that mainstream MUAs including web mail clients won't support it for some time if ever.

-- Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

John Levine writes:

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Patrick wrote:

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Is that something mailman(2|3) should support? To me it looks useful.

Personally I am +1 on "patches welcome" until users start asking for it (including via list and site managers). Until I see evidence of intent to use, I'm not excited about putting the effort into developing and maintaining it myself.

It would certainly make it easier to deal with grumpy gmail users, since gmail does not provide junk button feedback.

The disadvantage is that every recipient needs to get a separate copy of each message, because the list and user info has to be encoded in the list-unsubscribe URL. That's been standard in commercial e-mail for a decade, but a lot of discussion list operators still imagine that it's too slow.

I wouldn't have a problem with experimenting with enabling personalization by default in Mailman 3 to get experience with it.

I would oppose it in Mailman 2 at this point in its lifecycle because throttling of hosted lists is still a FAQ, and (at least theoretically) multiple recipient transactions can alleviate those limits.

Steve