On 7/26/02 7:10 PM, "J C Lawrence" <claw@kanga.nu> wrote:

...

You know, I was kinda noodling in that direction, but I hadn't figured THIS out. Whoof.

Quite nice isn't it. It effectively abstracts the concepts of getting mail from being able to send mail.

Yes, it also change the paradigm of the subscription to meet the multi-protocol reality we have today.

I've got two reasons why this made me sit up and take notice.

First, most of us are running lists with increasingly complex distribution systems. JC has built some nice (and complex) ways to allow reading and posting off the web. We have search engines returning messages, we have people who own 35 email addresses and can't for the life of them remember passwords to 6, much less which is subscribed to what. Some of us gateway into NNTP, and not all users think to follow up. They reply instead, so it hits the admin queue. And the admin has to figure out what's postable and what isn't. Many of us admins "solve" this by simply saying "if you ain't on the list, you ain't getting in". Which leads to....

Second, Barry, remember when you had to turn mailman-users into subscriber only? How you hated doing it, but the spammers made it necessary? (as the guy who runs the queue of mailman-users every couple of days, it hasn't gotten any better. Ugh). But that builds delays into those postings, which isn't good. But as the spammers have gotten more aggressive and better at sneaking past the gates, we've had to build bigger gates with nastier barbed wire. I've grown more and more worried that mailing lists were turning into armed camps, or gated communities. Or little paranoid balls of bodies unwilling to look out the peephole when someone rings the bell. Is that really what we wanted when we got involved with running lists?

I've been increasingly uncomfortable with the "gaza strip" aspect of running lists. This seems to me a great way to open those gates a bit -- safely. And build in some understanding that not everyone who's "subscribed" is in the subscriber lists. You have the archives, and the gateways, and the extended populations that are effectively disenfranchised from posting today. This builds a system that re-enfranchises them with minimal hassle and minimal risk of opening the door to the bad guys.

I think it's a great hack to get back to what we WANT lists to act like, not what we've been slowly forced to turn them into.

-- Chuq Von Rospach, Architech chuqui@plaidworks.com -- http://www.chuqui.com/

IMHO: Jargon. Acronym for In My Humble Opinion. Used to flag as an opinion something that is clearly from context an opinion to everyone except the mentally dense. Opinions flagged by IMHO are actually rarely humble. IMHO. (source: third unabridged dictionary of chuqui-isms).