Exposing not advertised lists via nntp archiver
Hi,
I have a conceptional problem:
There are mailinglists with a pubic archive but that not be advertised by the server. The nntp archiver now have to supply a list of all available archives. If this list does not contain a mailing list, in most news clients you do not have a chance to subscribe to that group and read the posts.
How to solve that? The only possibility I could think of uses the filter mechanism of the available newsgroups. The clients could supply a regexp like filter. I would implement a mechanism, that shows unadvertized lists with an archive only if the supplied filter is equal to the newsgroup name. Any other idea?
Alex
On 7/14/2012 6:26 PM, Alexander Sulfrian wrote:
Hi,
I have a conceptional problem:
There are mailinglists with a pubic archive but that not be advertised by the server. The nntp archiver now have to supply a list of all available archives. If this list does not contain a mailing list, in most news clients you do not have a chance to subscribe to that group and read the posts.
How to solve that? The only possibility I could think of uses the filter mechanism of the available newsgroups. The clients could supply a regexp like filter. I would implement a mechanism, that shows unadvertized lists with an archive only if the supplied filter is equal to the newsgroup name. Any other idea?
You could enable the newsgroups only if a user has authenticated.
Joshua Cranmer writes:
How to solve that? The only possibility I could think of uses the filter mechanism of the available newsgroups. The clients could supply a regexp like filter. I would implement a mechanism, that shows unadvertized lists with an archive only if the supplied filter is
-> unadvertized public lists
equal to the newsgroup name. Any other idea?
I think that's the closest match to the current behavior of Pipermail archives. But that is implementation-specific. Is that desirable behavior? I think it would be a good idea to discuss the specification with the HyperKitty folks, and on the Mailman Users list as well.
You could enable the newsgroups only if a user has authenticated.
That doesn't correspond well to Pipermail behavior (where users authenticate to a specific private list), and therefore would be surprising. That's not to say it's a bad idea, just that I think this is one case where we should at least discuss it with a broad group of users and admins, and not just developers.
Steve
On Jul 15, 2012, at 12:26 AM, Alexander Sulfrian wrote:
There are mailinglists with a pubic archive but that not be advertised by the server. The nntp archiver now have to supply a list of all available archives. If this list does not contain a mailing list, in most news clients you do not have a chance to subscribe to that group and read the posts.
How to solve that? The only possibility I could think of uses the filter mechanism of the available newsgroups. The clients could supply a regexp like filter. I would implement a mechanism, that shows unadvertized lists with an archive only if the supplied filter is equal to the newsgroup name. Any other idea?
'Advertised' lists are kind of a funny middle ground between private and public. They are public lists but don't show up on the overview page.
One way to think of this in a mm3 world is that advertisement is purely a function of the web ui. For all intents and purposes then, this flag has no impact on public vs. private, so it can be ignored. If it's a public list, then a user should be able to subscribe to the newsgroup, even if it's unadvertised. If the list admin really wants to prevent unauthorized access to the newsgroup, then she needs to make it a private list (in which case, authenticated users with the proper permission should be able to read the list).
At least, that's my current thinking, but I'm certainly open to other opinions. I almost wish we could just get rid of the advertised flag.
-Barry
On Jul 17, 2012, at 11:07 AM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
On Jul 15, 2012, at 12:26 AM, Alexander Sulfrian wrote:
There are mailinglists with a pubic archive but that not be advertised by the server.
'Advertised' lists are kind of a funny middle ground between private and public. They are public lists but don't show up on the overview page.
I assume that you mean "Unadvertised".
One way to think of this in a mm3 world is that advertisement is purely a function of the web ui.
And the equivalent "admin-by-mail" UI.
For all intents and purposes then, this flag has no impact on public vs. private, so it can be ignored.
But there probably should be a per-list configuration option for gateway-ing a list to the news. There may well be lists for which I am willing to advertise the existence without wanting their content to be spread far and wide.
At least, that's my current thinking, but I'm certainly open to other opinions. I almost wish we could just get rid of the advertised flag.
-Barry
Richard
On Jul 17, 2012, at 01:34 PM, Richard Wackerbarth wrote:
But there probably should be a per-list configuration option for gateway-ing a list to the news. There may well be lists for which I am willing to advertise the existence without wanting their content to be spread far and wide.
Agreed. Some thoughts.
One is whether the mailing list is gatewayed to "Usenet" (really any external NNTP server). We already have settings for this.
In an mm3 world where we can have multiple system-wide configured and enabled archivers, it probably makes sense to allow individual lists to opt-in or -out of specific available archivers. We've talked about this before, and it's something I'm generally in favor of allowing. The complication is that the system may want to force individual lists to enable certain archivers. E.g. if the site administrators want to keep a local maildir of all messages to all mailing lists.
Cheers, -Barry
On Jul 17, 2012, at 1:46 PM, Barry Warsaw wrote:
On Jul 17, 2012, at 01:34 PM, Richard Wackerbarth wrote:
But there probably should be a per-list configuration option for gateway-ing a list to the news. There may well be lists for which I am willing to advertise the existence without wanting their content to be spread far and wide.
Agreed. Some thoughts.
One is whether the mailing list is gatewayed to "Usenet" (really any external NNTP server). We already have settings for this.
Then that should suffice for Alex's purposes. He should not have to "discover" that the gateway is active. If he gets a message on the archive service interface, he sends it out. If it doesn't appear, it wasn't meant to be.
In an mm3 world where we can have multiple system-wide configured and enabled archivers, it probably makes sense to allow individual lists to opt-in or -out of specific available archivers.
Yes, this also allows George to collect metrics about messages without having the underlying messages archived. Or it also allows the messages to be archived without being counted by the metrics. It's all up to how our users choose to configure things.
We've talked about this before, and it's something I'm generally in favor of allowing.
The complication is that the system may want to force individual lists to enable certain archivers. E.g. if the site administrators want to keep a local maildir of all messages to all mailing lists.
This is a more general question concerning just how the configuration service enforces site policies.
On an implementation level, it gets mapped so that, to each of the various message handling services, each list has its own full set of configuration parameters. In other words, a message handler does not care whether "switch x" is set because it is set specifically for the current list or because it is set for all of the lists within some collection of lists.
Richard
participants (5)
-
Alexander Sulfrian -
Barry Warsaw -
Joshua Cranmer -
Richard Wackerbarth -
Stephen J. Turnbull