Re: feature reminder: no unsubscribe (Christopher Kolar)
On Fri, 21 Apr 2000 Christopher Kolar <ckolar@admin.aurora.edu> wrote:
I am setting up some more course mail lists and I remembered to check on our testbed box for a feature that a bunch of people requested in the past: that a mail list have a setting that subscribers cannot remove themselves without admin approval. This was sought for situations (like a class) where you don't want people to be able to opt out.
I did not find this in 2b1, is it implemented? Maybe just as something to drop into the config file instead of through the web? If not, is there a chance that it can get into the 2.0 code? Thanks much.
My apologies if this has already been hashed out to everyone's satisfaction, but i would be nervous about how this particular feature would be subject to abuse.
I suppose, on the one hand, that spammers and the like could just use something else - bare mailling list aliases, for that matter - to get their captive audiences. On the other hand, i wouldn't want mailman to be the tool of choice for capturing audiences. Might notifications of deenlistment, with the ease of forcing reenlistment, be sufficient?
Not adamant, but wary,
Ken Manheimer klm@digicool.com
On Fri, Apr 21, 2000 at 02:01:33PM -0400, Ken Manheimer wrote:
[ restricted unsubscribes ]
My apologies if this has already been hashed out to everyone's satisfaction, but i would be nervous about how this particular feature would be subject to abuse.
I suppose, on the one hand, that spammers and the like could just use something else - bare mailling list aliases, for that matter - to get their captive audiences. On the other hand, i wouldn't want mailman to be the tool of choice for capturing audiences. Might notifications of deenlistment, with the ease of forcing reenlistment, be sufficient?
Not in my case, and probably not in most cases that warrant restricted unsubscriptions. I thought about this for a bit too, back when I wrote it (i need it for myself in any case, but I was wondering wether to allow it for other list admins)
Either these 'spammers' run mailman themselves, or they run the list on someone elses' mailman install. Wether or not to allow restricted unsubscribing would be a global mailman setting, like 'open subscribe' currently -- the mailman admin has to explicitly enable it. If the mailman administrator does enable it, it's his responsibility to make sure it doesn't get abused. (When complaints come in, and the list admins refuse to handle these properly, simply turn the option off, or turn the list off, or whatever.)
If these spammers themselves run mailman, they can first of all add it themselves, and they would probably have to hack mailman anyway, to be usuable for spamming: my patch does nothing about the options page, and it is still possible to 'mute' the list, or turn on digest, and that kind of thing. (And I have no intention of disabling that. people sometimes do wish to turn off the list, temporarily, when they go on vacation, for instance.)
-- Thomas Wouters <thomas@xs4all.net>
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participants (2)
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Ken Manheimer -
Thomas Wouters