List entry indexing
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In a prior round of email, Ken mentioned that we would need to key the mail list entries to something other than the person's actual email address in order to implement the flexible user information editing capability of the web (changing one's sendto address, etc.). I agree that this is needed, sooner or later. Since I haven't seen the code yet, how difficult is it to just make a unique key for each subscriber and key the database off that with address as just one value?
I hope I'm not using this list too soon.
-- Robin K. Friedrich Houston, Texas Python Professional Services, Inc. friedrich@pythonpros.com http://www.pythonpros.com
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"RF" == Robin Friedrich <friedrich@pythonpros.com> writes:
RF> In a prior round of email, Ken mentioned that we would need to
RF> key the mail list entries to something other than the person's
RF> actual email address in order to implement the flexible user
RF> information editing capability of the web (changing one's
RF> sendto address, etc.). I agree that this is needed, sooner or
RF> later. Since I haven't seen the code yet, how difficult is it
RF> to just make a unique key for each subscriber and key the
RF> database off that with address as just one value?
I haven't looked at the code either, but you could default to using the mailbox as the name key to start with, and then just append unique numbers to this if there are duplicates. I wonder if there should be some way that a user can change keys, or specify different defaults, say if their mailbox is Some.Really.Long.Name@mean.com.
-Barry
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Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
The key should be invisible to the subscriber and therefore she shouldn't care. Is there something wrong with just having mailman generate a key for every subscription like "uniq42" and go from there? I also encourage people to enter real names somehow and use these on the info page. I also like the (admittedly extreme) option of using PIL to generate a gif of the address for placement on the individual subscriber's info page. Call me whacky but it just might be thought of as a kewl feature for the list manager consuming public to drop their archaic majordumo.
-- Robin K. Friedrich Houston, Texas Python Professional Services, Inc. friedrich@pythonpros.com http://www.pythonpros.com
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On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
Continuing monotonically from my prior rant (:-), i'd further say that it strikes me that "duplicate" mailboxes should be considered identical
- like "duplicate" user ids on a single host system.
Ken
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On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Robin Friedrich wrote:
Actually, that's not what i meant to imply. In a maillist system where users have "accounts" - ie some kind of identity which they can control and which has resources associated with it - it seems to me that the reception email address is precisely the right characteristic for identifying that account. It is only thing you really know with any assurance *at all* about the user. Everything else is on their say so.
To understand this perspective, consider that any user can hit the "send me my password" button for any account. The important thing is that the password gets sent to the email address for the account, not some arbitrary address of the user's choosing. The password and the only invariant of the account are tightly coupled. We do *not* want to allow any subscriber to specify different addresses for delivery of their password and delivery of their subsciption postings - the would allow pranksters and other malicious folk to subscribe and inflict unwanted mail from our lists on arbitrary people.
No, i think it's important to keep the email address as the account identifier, and not let the user change that within the same account. The nice thing mailman offers is change of anything else - digest or non-digest, concealment, etc.
I hope I'm not using this list too soon.
I don't think so. And btw, i'm hoping to finish packaging up my full set of patches to release within an hour or two - i'll be posting to both lists when it's ready...
Ken
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Ken Manheimer wrote:
Maybe I need to retune my frequency... hold on.... Ok.
What I was suggesting was that mailman simply generate an internal keyword for that subscriber and then set the email address attribute on that account id to the address they are sending it from. This doesn't violate anything you have said. AFTER the subscription is made and a password has been secured, then we allow the user to alter the address attribute using our form. Otherwise we are stuck with a unsubscribe/resubscribe process for those who have changed their email accounts.
-- Robin K. Friedrich Houston, Texas Python Professional Services, Inc. friedrich@pythonpros.com http://www.pythonpros.com
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On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Robin Friedrich wrote:
Heck, i suppose we could set something up that simply creates the new account, copies over the settings and subscriptions from the old one, and deletes the old one - sending email adresses to both addresses in the process. I suppose the nice thing will be having the subscriptions follow - though currently mailman keeps the subscription info with the lists and not with the accounts. I'll have to think about it some more, but it does sound worth doing.
Is this approaching what you're seeking?
Ken
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Ken Manheimer wrote:
I suppose. Although since you say that the subscriptions are kept with the lists that would be a chore to change in the code. It may be too much trouble. I was thinking from the subscriber's perspective rather than the list's perspective which is of course how these things are structured. Reversing the sense of this in the code would probably be a pain. I'll just let it simmer in the back of my cranium for now and try not to let it bother me;-]
-- Robin K. Friedrich Houston, Texas Python Professional Services, Inc. friedrich@pythonpros.com http://www.pythonpros.com
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I would definitely like to see a user-centric view of the world, as opposed to a list-centric view, especially when we're talking about users managing their presence via the Web. I want to be able to pull up one Web page that gives me a form by which I can change my email address in one fell swoop, perhaps have different email addresses per list, change my visibility per list, etc. If I had to visit a list-centric page for every list I'm a member of, that would be a huge pain. (But list-centric Web pages still have their uses, so the same database could drive both views).
Maybe the code isn't set up for this now, but it should be a goal of future development. In that case, while I agree with Ken that the email account is critical as the user's identity, having some other unique key to identify the user is helpful when email addresses change, as is inevitable. Requiring or using a public key system seems excessive, but I don't see how to keep the user id from being given to the user. I might not remember what address I'm subscribed with on which list (I see this happen a lot with Majordomo users actually).
-Barry
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"RF" == Robin Friedrich <friedrich@pythonpros.com> writes:
RF> In a prior round of email, Ken mentioned that we would need to
RF> key the mail list entries to something other than the person's
RF> actual email address in order to implement the flexible user
RF> information editing capability of the web (changing one's
RF> sendto address, etc.). I agree that this is needed, sooner or
RF> later. Since I haven't seen the code yet, how difficult is it
RF> to just make a unique key for each subscriber and key the
RF> database off that with address as just one value?
I haven't looked at the code either, but you could default to using the mailbox as the name key to start with, and then just append unique numbers to this if there are duplicates. I wonder if there should be some way that a user can change keys, or specify different defaults, say if their mailbox is Some.Really.Long.Name@mean.com.
-Barry
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Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
The key should be invisible to the subscriber and therefore she shouldn't care. Is there something wrong with just having mailman generate a key for every subscription like "uniq42" and go from there? I also encourage people to enter real names somehow and use these on the info page. I also like the (admittedly extreme) option of using PIL to generate a gif of the address for placement on the individual subscriber's info page. Call me whacky but it just might be thought of as a kewl feature for the list manager consuming public to drop their archaic majordumo.
-- Robin K. Friedrich Houston, Texas Python Professional Services, Inc. friedrich@pythonpros.com http://www.pythonpros.com
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On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
Continuing monotonically from my prior rant (:-), i'd further say that it strikes me that "duplicate" mailboxes should be considered identical
- like "duplicate" user ids on a single host system.
Ken
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On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Robin Friedrich wrote:
Actually, that's not what i meant to imply. In a maillist system where users have "accounts" - ie some kind of identity which they can control and which has resources associated with it - it seems to me that the reception email address is precisely the right characteristic for identifying that account. It is only thing you really know with any assurance *at all* about the user. Everything else is on their say so.
To understand this perspective, consider that any user can hit the "send me my password" button for any account. The important thing is that the password gets sent to the email address for the account, not some arbitrary address of the user's choosing. The password and the only invariant of the account are tightly coupled. We do *not* want to allow any subscriber to specify different addresses for delivery of their password and delivery of their subsciption postings - the would allow pranksters and other malicious folk to subscribe and inflict unwanted mail from our lists on arbitrary people.
No, i think it's important to keep the email address as the account identifier, and not let the user change that within the same account. The nice thing mailman offers is change of anything else - digest or non-digest, concealment, etc.
I hope I'm not using this list too soon.
I don't think so. And btw, i'm hoping to finish packaging up my full set of patches to release within an hour or two - i'll be posting to both lists when it's ready...
Ken
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Ken Manheimer wrote:
Maybe I need to retune my frequency... hold on.... Ok.
What I was suggesting was that mailman simply generate an internal keyword for that subscriber and then set the email address attribute on that account id to the address they are sending it from. This doesn't violate anything you have said. AFTER the subscription is made and a password has been secured, then we allow the user to alter the address attribute using our form. Otherwise we are stuck with a unsubscribe/resubscribe process for those who have changed their email accounts.
-- Robin K. Friedrich Houston, Texas Python Professional Services, Inc. friedrich@pythonpros.com http://www.pythonpros.com
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On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Robin Friedrich wrote:
Heck, i suppose we could set something up that simply creates the new account, copies over the settings and subscriptions from the old one, and deletes the old one - sending email adresses to both addresses in the process. I suppose the nice thing will be having the subscriptions follow - though currently mailman keeps the subscription info with the lists and not with the accounts. I'll have to think about it some more, but it does sound worth doing.
Is this approaching what you're seeking?
Ken
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Ken Manheimer wrote:
I suppose. Although since you say that the subscriptions are kept with the lists that would be a chore to change in the code. It may be too much trouble. I was thinking from the subscriber's perspective rather than the list's perspective which is of course how these things are structured. Reversing the sense of this in the code would probably be a pain. I'll just let it simmer in the back of my cranium for now and try not to let it bother me;-]
-- Robin K. Friedrich Houston, Texas Python Professional Services, Inc. friedrich@pythonpros.com http://www.pythonpros.com

I would definitely like to see a user-centric view of the world, as opposed to a list-centric view, especially when we're talking about users managing their presence via the Web. I want to be able to pull up one Web page that gives me a form by which I can change my email address in one fell swoop, perhaps have different email addresses per list, change my visibility per list, etc. If I had to visit a list-centric page for every list I'm a member of, that would be a huge pain. (But list-centric Web pages still have their uses, so the same database could drive both views).
Maybe the code isn't set up for this now, but it should be a goal of future development. In that case, while I agree with Ken that the email account is critical as the user's identity, having some other unique key to identify the user is helpful when email addresses change, as is inevitable. Requiring or using a public key system seems excessive, but I don't see how to keep the user id from being given to the user. I might not remember what address I'm subscribed with on which list (I see this happen a lot with Majordomo users actually).
-Barry
participants (4)
-
Barry A. Warsaw
-
Ken Manheimer
-
Robin Friedrich
-
Robin Friedrich