Client wants unique archiving method
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I just moved a client to Dreamhost from another provider where they
also had a Mailman discussion list.
Everything is working at Dreamhost, but they have a strange request.
They want all original posts to go to all subscribers as normal. BUT,
they want all replies to ONLY go to the original poster. But they
also want those replies to be archived so the entire list can choose
to view them or not.
I've looked through all of the Mailman config options and cannot find
a way to achieve what they want, even though they swear this is the
way it worked with their old host.
Is this possible, or are they on crack?
AJ
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Andrew Jones sent the message below at 11:23 8/23/2006:
They are on crack. And you really don't want to get into this can of worms. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it is not something that would be easy nor reliable. See below for the full explanation.
In the standard mailman distribution, you can set up a list so that replies go to the list (called "Reply-To munging" and despised/deprecated by some) or to the poster. If you set it up in the latter fashion, the e-mail in reply will never hit the mailman server and you have no way of archiving it. If you set it up for reply to list, everything will go to the list and get archived.
The only possible way to even come close to what they want is to modify the mailman code. It would be difficult to do and would be fraught with potential problems. Each incoming e-mail would have to be examined for a number of things to determine if it was a reply or not and who it should go to. This means that the In-Reply-To: header must be examined to see if there is a matching message ID in the archive. Depending on list size and traffic, the archive size and the server's processing load, that could be a long and slow process.
If you found a matching message, you would then have to determine who the reply should go to. That task is non-trivial and you would have to make a number of assumptions that may or may not be valid. If there is only one matching e-mail, you could extract the From: header from the original post, but if you have the list configured to hide the identity of list members (you have anonymous_list set to Yes), you cannot do that.
But what do you do if you have multiple messages in a long thread? Do you just send the reply to the most immediate poster or to everyone in the chain? Is your assumption on what to do always appropriate, I would say that it probably won't be.
What happens if somebody replies to a thread by creating a new post that does not have the In-Reply-To: header? What about when somebody goes off on a tangent and uses Reply-To in their MUA to post a new message to the list? (People do these sorts of thing sometimes, there is no way you can reliably account for them).
So you can see why I say they are on crack. Tell them to step back and take a deep breath of reality.
Dragon
Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)
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On Aug 23, 2006, at 4:02 PM, Dragon wrote:
Thanks for the quick and (very) detailed response.
Again, I cannot understand why they'd want it to work that way. And
if it's true that it worked that way on their old host, someone
must've made those customizations for them.
As is typical with many clients, they think their users are
borderline retarded. To have a full archive, but only email people
original posts defeats the purpose of having a discussion list, in my
opinion.
I told them if they wanted this functionality, they should just
install a forum :)
Thanks again,
AJ
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/20806188bd7e2a6b1b85a58a21928c05.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I would think you could make it work "outside the system" by setting reply-to-poster, then changing the alias for the list to go both to the list processing command, and to a dummy-user . Then pipe the dummy user's mail into something that is web-accessible. You could use another mailman list, and either keep the membership lists in sync or give the second list a password that you advertise on the first list, or make it public. Or, you could use some mail-to-web gateway other than mailman.
But I agree that in practice this wouldn't work too well. (although, there will never be long chains of messages, because nobody will be able to reply to a reply)
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/358f04f5f993066da926a0892f774c83.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Andrew Jones sent the message below at 11:23 8/23/2006:
They are on crack. And you really don't want to get into this can of worms. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it is not something that would be easy nor reliable. See below for the full explanation.
In the standard mailman distribution, you can set up a list so that replies go to the list (called "Reply-To munging" and despised/deprecated by some) or to the poster. If you set it up in the latter fashion, the e-mail in reply will never hit the mailman server and you have no way of archiving it. If you set it up for reply to list, everything will go to the list and get archived.
The only possible way to even come close to what they want is to modify the mailman code. It would be difficult to do and would be fraught with potential problems. Each incoming e-mail would have to be examined for a number of things to determine if it was a reply or not and who it should go to. This means that the In-Reply-To: header must be examined to see if there is a matching message ID in the archive. Depending on list size and traffic, the archive size and the server's processing load, that could be a long and slow process.
If you found a matching message, you would then have to determine who the reply should go to. That task is non-trivial and you would have to make a number of assumptions that may or may not be valid. If there is only one matching e-mail, you could extract the From: header from the original post, but if you have the list configured to hide the identity of list members (you have anonymous_list set to Yes), you cannot do that.
But what do you do if you have multiple messages in a long thread? Do you just send the reply to the most immediate poster or to everyone in the chain? Is your assumption on what to do always appropriate, I would say that it probably won't be.
What happens if somebody replies to a thread by creating a new post that does not have the In-Reply-To: header? What about when somebody goes off on a tangent and uses Reply-To in their MUA to post a new message to the list? (People do these sorts of thing sometimes, there is no way you can reliably account for them).
So you can see why I say they are on crack. Tell them to step back and take a deep breath of reality.
Dragon
Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/45b22016a44c689fe40c2051ae8f2dc9.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Aug 23, 2006, at 4:02 PM, Dragon wrote:
Thanks for the quick and (very) detailed response.
Again, I cannot understand why they'd want it to work that way. And
if it's true that it worked that way on their old host, someone
must've made those customizations for them.
As is typical with many clients, they think their users are
borderline retarded. To have a full archive, but only email people
original posts defeats the purpose of having a discussion list, in my
opinion.
I told them if they wanted this functionality, they should just
install a forum :)
Thanks again,
AJ
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/20806188bd7e2a6b1b85a58a21928c05.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I would think you could make it work "outside the system" by setting reply-to-poster, then changing the alias for the list to go both to the list processing command, and to a dummy-user . Then pipe the dummy user's mail into something that is web-accessible. You could use another mailman list, and either keep the membership lists in sync or give the second list a password that you advertise on the first list, or make it public. Or, you could use some mail-to-web gateway other than mailman.
But I agree that in practice this wouldn't work too well. (although, there will never be long chains of messages, because nobody will be able to reply to a reply)
participants (3)
-
Andrew Jones
-
Dragon
-
Elizabeth Schwartz