Welcome E-mail Reply To
Hi guys, So I just recently purchased a mailman 2.1.39 hosted list from mailmanlists.org. I'm trying to start a mailing list for my gliding club where most of the membership is not terribly technologically literate (fortunately I am) and not big on reading directions, so I'm trying to keep it as simple and as least error-prone as possible for our club members. I have ran into 2 problems that could potentially cause a member to think he's sending an e-mail to the list, but actually isn't.
Problem #1: One of my friends (who isn't tech savvy and doesn't read directions) was my guinea pig and successfully joined. The problem is he tried to send his first e-mail to the list by simply replying to the welcome e-mail, so he e-mailed my-list-request@mailmanlists.org and not my-list@mailmanlists.org. Wouldn't surprise me if others do the same thing. Is there any option to change the address the welcome e-mail comes from? Is there any other good ways to mitigate this problem?
The other has to do with the replying and the "nodupes" feature. So first, I am trying to keep the list as collaborative as possible and have people replying to messages to the whole list and not to the original sender. first_strip_reply_to is on, reply_goes_to_list is set to "This list" and from_is_list is set to "Munge From". So here's the scenario about how an e-mail that should have gone to the list actually just went to an individual user: 1) Bob sends an e-mail to the list. 2) Steve replies all (not just reply) to this e-mail. This sends it both to my-lists@mailmanlists.org and bob@bobs-domain.com. 3) The "nodupes" flag on Bob's account realizes Bob will get the e-mail directly when Steve e-mailed bob@bobs-domain.com as part of the reply and the other part of the reply to my-list@mailmanlists.org is stripped away (at least for Bob) so that Bob doesn't get the reply twice. 4) Now Bob hits reply (not reply all) to the reply e-mail, but since the reply e-mail he received was sent directly to bob@bobs-domain.com and not the reply e-mail that went through my-lists@mailmanlists.org the reply address is steve@steves-domain.com, not my-list@mailmanlists.org. 5) The reply to the reply is now just addressed to Steve, not the whole list! I couldn't find any combination of first_strip_reply_to, reply_goes_to_list and from_is_list to make this problem go away and keep everyone on the list regardless of reply or reply all. The anonymous_list option solves it, but then it strips the original sender's name (not just their e-mail address) and I don't want that. Keeping "Bob via my-list (my-list@mailmanlists.org)" without bob@bobs-domain.com in the Cc, From fields or anywhere else would be ideal, but I can't figure out how to make that happen. Anybody have any ideas?
Thanks! Omri
On Tue, 2022-08-30 at 22:34 -0500, Omri Kalinsky wrote:
Problem #1: One of my friends (who isn't tech savvy and doesn't read directions) was my guinea pig and successfully joined. The problem is he tried to send his first e-mail to the list by simply replying to the welcome e-mail, so he e-mailed my-list-request@mailmanlists.org and not my-list@mailmanlists.org. Wouldn't surprise me if others do the same thing. Is there any option to change the address the welcome e-mail comes from? Is there any other good ways to mitigate this problem?
You could edit the text of the "Welcome email" and have an alert at the top of the message with something like:
/////////////////////////// DO NOT reply to this email. To post a message to the list, address it to my-list@mailmanlists.org ///////////////////////////
See: General Options > Edit the public HTML pages and text files > Welcome email text file
Omri Kalinsky writes:
So I just recently purchased a mailman 2.1.39 hosted list from mailmanlists.org.
Feel free to ask questions here, but we are volunteers and have no connection that I know of to mailmanlists.org. If you're paying for support, you should get quicker support from the vendor.
I will take a look at the rest of the thread and if I have comments I'll make them there.
Steve
Omri Kalinsky writes:
Problem #1: One of my friends (who isn't tech savvy and doesn't read directions) was my guinea pig and successfully joined. The problem is he tried to send his first e-mail to the list by simply replying to the welcome e-mail, so he e-mailed my-list-request@mailmanlists.org and not my-list@mailmanlists.org. Wouldn't surprise me if others do the same thing. Is there any option to change the address the welcome e-mail comes from?
No, there is no such option.
This situation embarrasses or annoys one subscriber. If you arranged for the reply to go to the list, as he expected, it would go out to the entire list, under a confusing "Welcome to the list" subject, and would possibly induce a chain of "why am I getting 'welcome to the list' messages now?" replies. Mark Dale's suggestion of adding the "how to post" message at the top is the best idea I know of. Most modern mail clients will turn the address into a clickable link, as well.
The other has to do with the replying and the "nodupes" feature. So first, I am trying to keep the list as collaborative as possible and have people replying to messages to the whole list and not to the original sender. first_strip_reply_to is on, reply_goes_to_list is set to "This list" and from_is_list is set to "Munge From".
[...]
I couldn't find any combination of first_strip_reply_to, reply_goes_to_list and from_is_list to make this problem go away
There isn't one in Mailman, except anonymous list. The problem is that anyone can pretend to be Bob simply by setting their display name to Bob. Then the mailing list strips the address which might be completely unrelated to Bob, and only an email expert can detect the spoof. We judged this to be a bigger problem, as it violates the usual expectations of subscribers.[1]
To get the behavior you want from Mailman, you'll need to patch the code. As Mailman 2 is end of life we won't be patching and releasing such a feature ourselves.
and keep everyone on the list regardless of reply or reply all.
Forum software is a better choice for this kind of channel.
Steve
Footnotes: [1] We don't consider it an important problem on anonymous lists because the presumption of and need for anonymity overcomes this problem.
participants (3)
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Mark Dale -
Omri Kalinsky -
Stephen J. Turnbull