Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject
Hi all:
I have the following recurring problem with mailing lists all over the Internet: people do reply to my posts, by they do not address or copy me in their replies. They send their e-mails only to the mailing list. Or they reply to the previous reply, and forget to copy the original poster.
So I do not get a copy of the relevant messages straight away. If need to manually fish their answers from the web interface. If there is one. And then composing e-mails is cumbersome. And the subject threading no longer works properly.
This problem has annoyed me (and other people on the Internet) for a long time.
I cannot subscribe to every mailing list I need to occasionally use. It's far too much. This e-mail is the perfect example of such a come-ask-and-go-again scenario.
If I need to subscribe in order to post a question, I turn off mail delivery straight away.
Getting a digest with all e-mails does not help either. Replying to a single e-mail in this mode is cumbersome too. Besides, I do not want to manually skip other messages which do not interest me.
Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I post to a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I then get an e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.
The "topic" feature in Mailman is different. Very few people use it. I need something based on the e-mail subject.
Is there any way to achieve that with Mailman?
Thanks in advance, rdiez
Hello R. Diez via Mailman-Users. On Thu, 31 Jan 2019 11:11:48 +0100, you wrote:
I have the following recurring problem with mailing lists all over the Internet: people do reply to my posts, by they do not address or copy me in their replies. They send their e-mails only to the mailing list. Or they reply to the previous reply, and forget to copy the original poster.
If I post a question to a list, I am also a subscriber to the list and I get replies to my question that way.
So I do not get a copy of the relevant messages straight away.
A mailing list may have a web archive, but the standard thing is that the conversation goes via e-mail.
I cannot subscribe to every mailing list I need to occasionally use. It's far too much. This e-mail is the perfect example of such a come-ask-and-go-again scenario.
So, to post to _this_ list, you had to subscribe to it. You may remain a subscriber until your question is answered. Where is the problem?
If I need to subscribe in order to post a question, I turn off mail delivery straight away.
Aha.
Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I post to a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I then get an e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.
I think you are talking here about a web forum, where you can "subscribe" to information posted to a certain thread. I never saw this in a real mailing list.
I Cc: this reply to you to make sure you see it - but I won’t do this for every message I write to any mailing list normally.
Christian
--
Christian F. Buser, Hohle Gasse 6, CH-5507 Mellingen (Switzerland)
Hilfe fuer Strassenkinder in Ghana: http://www.chance-for-children.org
[...] I think you are talking here about a web forum, where you can "subscribe" to information posted to a certain thread. I never saw this in a real mailing list.
I Cc: this reply to you to make sure you see it - but I wonοΏ½t do this for every message I write to any mailing list normally. [...]
This is a serious shortcoming in Mailman. I am surprised that such a basic human communication issue has not been properly addressed.
See here what kind of effect that can have. From the message below, a long discussion follows on this subject:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2018-July/294510.html
I would like to specifically mention the following page, which accurate describes the problem:
http://david.woodhou.se/reply-to-list.html
All that would not be necessary if Mailman were smart enough. It already knows how to group e-mails by subject. It could make sure the participants are all kept in the loop.
Regards, rdiez
All that would not be necessary if Mailman were smart enough. It already knows how to group e-mails by subject. It could make sure the participants are all kept in the loop.
Except then you run into ethical issues and possible legal violations of emailing people who have not opted-n to receive the email. Just posting to a web forum does not automatically subscribe you to a thread, you have to check that you want notifications - and before you can even get to that point, you have to create an account so you can post. And, as has been pointed out previously in this discussion, there is a difference between mailing lists and web forums or bulletin boards...
Except then you run into ethical issues and possible legal violations of emailing people who have not opted-n to receive the email.
This is becoming tiresome...
When you e-mail or subscribe to a mailing list, you are opting in to receive e-mail. If you participate in a topic/subject/thread, of course you expect to receive e-mails about those. That is what mailing lists are about. That should stand in court.
Mailman has a long page with settings like digest mode, stop delivery (holiday mode), and many, many more. Other communication platforms like Google Group allow you to manage subscriptions per topic. How about some new settings like this:
[ x ] Automatically follow topics/subjects/threads I have participated in.
And a reset button for the unlikely emergency:
( Drop all automatic following for all threads )
[...] you have to create an account so you can post.
This is mostly the case because of spam.
I never said that I oppose the subscription step. But that should be some kind of authentication and opt in disclaimer.
I am against that you must then read everything. Or nothing. Or manually create filters on your e-mail box. Or some other non-practical way that turn people off before coming by.
And, as has been pointed out previously in this discussion, there is a difference between mailing lists and web forums or bulletin boards...
There is no such difference. It is all in your head. There are communication platforms that have both interfaces, e-mail and web. You can configure and use your mailing lists / forums / whatever in many ways. You can state your own policies in your own mailing lists. People participating in mailing lists do work in threads. That is how humans operate.
Other systems can do it. I understand that you do not want to implement it yourself in Mailman, but why oppose the idea?
Regards, rdiez
Hello R. Diez. On Fri, 1 Feb 2019 09:30:54 +0100, you wrote:
Other systems can do it. I understand that you do not want to implement it yourself in Mailman, but why oppose the idea?
Then use these "other systems", please.
Or try to implement the solution suggested by tlhackque in his/her mail on Thu, 31 Jan 2019 13:35:20 -0500. But I see from your message at Fri, 1 Feb 2019 09:14:49 +0100 that you prefer to have others do the work for you...
And no, you do not need to Cc: me for each of your messages.
Christian
--
Christian F. Buser, Hohle Gasse 6, CH-5507 Mellingen (Switzerland)
Hilfe fuer Strassenkinder in Ghana: http://www.chance-for-children.org
On 2/1/2019 3:30 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
This is becoming tiresome...
Indeed. Except I'd substitute the second-person pronoun for the third...
Mailman has a long page with settings like digest mode, stop delivery (holiday mode), and many, many more. Other communication platforms like Google Group allow you to manage subscriptions per topic. How about some new settings like this:
[ x ] Automatically follow topics/subjects/threads I have participated in.
What you are asking for is not impossible but it is not a SMOP. It will require a significant effort on the part of volunteer developers and result in a significant increase in the size of the package, with a concomitant increase in volunteer support and administration effort.
And, as has been pointed out previously in this discussion, there is a difference between mailing lists and web forums or bulletin boards...
There is no such difference. It is all in your head.
You have been provided several patient, thoughtful, and perfectly clear explanations that there _is_ a difference between a listserver and a forum/BB, starting with the distinction between a "push" interface and a "pull" one.
There are communication platforms that have both interfaces, e-mail and web.
Yes, but they are not as lithe or lissome as Mailman, and more difficult to administer.
Other systems can do it. I understand that you do not want to implement it yourself in Mailman, but why oppose the idea?
One word: spork.
There are plenty of web forum offerings, many free, that have some sort of email access, usually as an afterthought. As such, they are the software equivalent of a spoon into which someone cut notches, making it a lousy fork and a poor spoon.
I, for one, have no time to waste logging into dozens of fora looking for postings of interest. Such postings are emailed to me, in the same way that notes to all of my email accounts are. My MUA does the spam-filtering, searching, sorting, filing, display, and composition functions. I need only that one (programmable) tool to handle all my inputs.
-Chip-
On 2/1/19 12:30 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
Other systems can do it. I understand that you do not want to implement it yourself in Mailman, but why oppose the idea?
Mailman 2.1 is basically on life support and will not implement significant new features.
The HyperKitty archiver shipped with Mailman 3 supports a "pull" model in which you can read and reply to threads via a web UI. I understand this isn't what you are asking for, I.e., the ability to receive posts by email but only in selected threads, but we are still thinking about something like Systers' Dynamic Sublists for MM 3.
I understand that various "issue trackers", including those on Launchpad and GitLab which we use for Mailman 2.1 and Mailman 3, do what you want, and that is appropriate for an issue tracker, but in my view, a mailing list serves a different purpose. If you want issue tracker behavior, use an issue tracker.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
To analogize the entire thread-
Mailman is a high quality precision-ground Phillips screwdriver, but it does not work on square-drive (Robertson) screws nor open paint cans. The OP is asking that it be modified so that it does; the developers and other users are discussing why this is not a good idea.
BTW, I'm not aware of any mailing list managers that will automatically add a subscriber based on a single message to the list, if nothing else, there should always be an opt-in confirmation (prevents false additions and backscatter from forged messages).
later,
z!
On 1/31/19 12:58 PM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
[...] I think you are talking here about a web forum, where you can "subscribe" to information posted to a certain thread. I never saw this in a real mailing list.
I Cc: this reply to you to make sure you see it - but I wonοΏ½t do this for every message I write to any mailing list normally. [...]
This is a serious shortcoming in Mailman. I am surprised that such a basic human communication issue has not been properly addressed.
See here what kind of effect that can have. From the message below, a long discussion follows on this subject:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2018-July/294510.html
I would like to specifically mention the following page, which accurate describes the problem:
http://david.woodhou.se/reply-to-list.html
All that would not be necessary if Mailman were smart enough. It already knows how to group e-mails by subject. It could make sure the participants are all kept in the loop.
Regards, rdiez
Mailman really CAN'T be smart enough, as email isn't that sort of media. The reader of the message reads the message, and decides where to send the reply to. THEY decide whether to copy you or not as an explicit destination, and likely different people will choose different choices. Mailman when it gets the message knows enough to be able to distribute it to subscribers in their chosen way.
Email doesn't really have the concept of a 'Topic' like a forum, the closest email has is the In-Reply-To and References headers, but if the list is sort of busy (which would be the only real reason to want to limit what you get from the list) then it is actually a lot of work to track, as for every message the list would need to check for every subscriber if they have 'followed' ANY of the messages that this message is a reply to, and if so add this message to the list. The problem is that while on a forum, all messages posted in a topic, will be connected to THAT topic, an email message doesn't necessarily keep track of all the messages, or even the original message that it is a reply to, by the standard, it is supposed to at a minimum refer to the message it is a direct reply, and possible some number or previous messages in the chain.
The sort by subject is a very different thing, as that doesn't need to know about individual subscribers, and if the 'topic' gets broken because someone edited the subject slightly it isn't an issue, as the data is still all there, will if you tried to keep a list of subjects that a subscriber was interested in, they won't get messages where some small change was made in the subject. Small changes can sometimes happen just by slightly mis-configured software, doing things like adding additional re: prefixes
I will ask you how much you are willing to talk to a person who basically interrupts, says they aren't really interested in the general conversation, so isn't really listening, but if you go out of your way to answer in a special way they will hear you. (Which is one way to describe what you are doing),
-- Richard Damon
[...] I will ask you how much you are willing to talk to a person who basically interrupts, says they aren't really interested in the general conversation, so isn't really listening, but if you go out of your way to answer in a special way they will hear you. (Which is one way to describe what you are doing),
I do not understand why you are misrepresenting my actions. This is the second time in this list, but I have noticed this pattern elsewhere.
I am not interrupting anything. That is a silly thing to say in this context. A mailing list is not a conversation that can get interrupted. A mailing list revolves around "topics". That is why people sometimes ask to start a new thread if the subject changes. That is how you skip the things you are not interested in. You cannot follow everything.
Most mailing lists labelled as "users" explicitly state that users are welcome to ask questions. I have participated in many such mailing lists, mostly for a short time, because I am using a lot of open-source software. I have not (really) subscribed to any of them. But I am listening, at least to my subjects. I am participating in this matter.
It is unrealistic to expect general users to subscribe to every mailing list and read many messages before they ask the one important question for them today. It is unrealistic to hope that this will help grow a community.
I am not asking for people to "go out of their way to answer in a special way". I am saying that Mailman should do it automatically. See below.
If you think users like me, who do not subscribe and read everything, interrupt and do not really contribute with their messages, your best defence is to make this mailing list private. However, if this were my open-source project, I would rather not build such communication barriers. This includes dropping terms like "spam" or "a person who basically interrupts" around them.
Of course there is the concept of 'Topic' in a mailing list. Mailman, the web interface, or whatever, does know how to group topics together. That is an obvious feature, because people tend to work/participate in threads.
It is true that Mailman cannot achieve 100 % reliability, because it is based on e-mail. Nobody would expect that, not even in web-only forums (notification e-mails can also get lost). But Mailman should at least try its best. It has the e-mail subject and some extra headers to help. That would be enough in most scenarios, like it is usually enough for the web archives. Filtering short prefixes like "Re:" has never been a great problem. And threads participated by humans do not last forever. My guess is, it would mostly work.
Maybe some huge mailing list, like the Linux Kernel, would have to disable such a feature because of CPU or disk load. But most mailing lists could cope with that. Incidentally, on huge mailing lists, where no-one can read everything, people are more aware that you should address and/or copy the original poster, or they will not get the message.
It is silly to ask people to setup their own e-mail filters for each subject they are interested in, like others suggested here. Computers are there to help users, and not the other way around.
Other communication platforms, like Google Groups and https://forum.freifunk.net/ , have both an e-mail and a web interface. I rarely use those web interfaces, and they still do a pretty good job at keeping you in the loop for the topics you have participated in.
Unfortunately, I cannot contribute code to this project. It is not just lack of time (I have my own open-source projects), but I don't know Python yet.
Regards, rdiez
On 2/1/19 3:14 AM, R. Diez wrote:
[...] I will ask you how much you are willing to talk to a person who basically interrupts, says they aren't really interested in the general conversation, so isn't really listening, but if you go out of your way to answer in a special way they will hear you. (Which is one way to describe what you are doing),
I do not understand why you are misrepresenting my actions. This is the second time in this list, but I have noticed this pattern elsewhere.
I am not interrupting anything. That is a silly thing to say in this context. A mailing list is not a conversation that can get interrupted. A mailing list revolves around "topics". That is why people sometimes ask to start a new thread if the subject changes. That is how you skip the things you are not interested in. You cannot follow everything.
Perhaps I'm being a bit over dramatic, but it does, in my mind, describe what you seem to be doing, You come in and say that the list software isn't working the way you would prefer, but for this conversation, everyone else needs to change how they use the list so you can participate, since you don't care enough for the list to receive email from it for a few days to discuss the issue, or for you to the archives to see replies. You basically said, if you don't do it the way *I* asked, I won't see what you said, (implying that you don't care).
Note, In Mail Readers, topics DO matter and they can sort and organize based on them, but then they keep all the messages organized in a way that makes this fairly easy to do. Perhaps you don't realize that the Mailman core DOESN'T keep a history of all messages posted, it passes the message off to an archive that handle that job.
Most mailing lists labelled as "users" explicitly state that users are welcome to ask questions. I have participated in many such mailing lists, mostly for a short time, because I am using a lot of open-source software. I have not (really) subscribed to any of them. But I am listening, at least to my subjects. I am participating in this matter.
It is unrealistic to expect general users to subscribe to every mailing list and read many messages before they ask the one important question for them today. It is unrealistic to hope that this will help grow a community.
The expectation for a mailing list, is that someone with a question will come and hopefully first browse through the archives (perhaps with a search) to see if the question has already been answered, then if not, subscribe to post the question, and read the list for replies, and when the question is answered, they perhaps will unsubscribe. It is expected that before posting someone will look at the list and see how it is expected that a support question will be asked (some lists have a very detailed list of information they want about your configuration if asking about a problem, as that is what is needed to solve it). To just barge in and do it 'their own way' is just being impolite.
I am not asking for people to "go out of their way to answer in a special way". I am saying that Mailman should do it automatically. See below.
As I said before in my messagel it CAN'T. Mail doesn't work that way, and it becomes impractical to try and track that.
If you think users like me, who do not subscribe and read everything, interrupt and do not really contribute with their messages, your best defence is to make this mailing list private. However, if this were my open-source project, I would rather not build such communication barriers. This includes dropping terms like "spam" or "a person who basically interrupts" around them.
Of course there is the concept of 'Topic' in a mailing list. Mailman, the web interface, or whatever, does know how to group topics together. That is an obvious feature, because people tend to work/participate in threads.
As I said above, the Archive, since it keeps all the messages, has the concept of a topic, but NOT a concept of a subscriber (except perhaps for authorization to see parts of the web interface). There is no way for a person to see a selected set of topics. Note also that to keep things manageable, it breaks things up into monthly chunks, to this message won't be tied to other related messages from the previous month.
It is true that Mailman cannot achieve 100 % reliability, because it is based on e-mail. Nobody would expect that, not even in web-only forums (notification e-mails can also get lost). But Mailman should at least try its best. It has the e-mail subject and some extra headers to help. That would be enough in most scenarios, like it is usually enough for the web archives. Filtering short prefixes like "Re:" has never been a great problem. And threads participated by humans do not last forever. My guess is, it would mostly work.
Try to implement it! One thing to note, Mailman 2 does not have a relational database in its back end (as I understand it), but the user database is kept in a 'flat file' listing. Tracking the data that would be needed to see if a message is part of a topic that a given person is interested in starts to get large (especially if you figure many people will be using this feature, after all, if many aren't, then is it worth it). As to filtering the Re, perhaps it isn't hard if you are only dealing with strictly conforming mail programs, but having had to deal with things like this, there are LOTS of system that don't quite follow the rules and it gets complicated. For an archive, the 'cost' of making a mistake is somewhat small, the messages gets separated but are still there. In a topic subscription system, it is more important, as people don't get messages that they should.
'Mostly work' is often a problem. Computers need precise procedures, and people tend to expect that they do things right.
Maybe some huge mailing list, like the Linux Kernel, would have to disable such a feature because of CPU or disk load. But most mailing lists could cope with that. Incidentally, on huge mailing lists, where no-one can read everything, people are more aware that you should address and/or copy the original poster, or they will not get the message.
It is silly to ask people to setup their own e-mail filters for each subject they are interested in, like others suggested here. Computers are there to help users, and not the other way around.
Other communication platforms, like Google Groups and https://forum.freifunk.net/ , have both an e-mail and a web interface. I rarely use those web interfaces, and they still do a pretty good job at keeping you in the loop for the topics you have participated in.
Note that these are fundamentally different types of systems. Web based systems are a 'Pull' Technology. In general, the system is based on you need to come to them to get information. Email lists are a 'Push' technology, the information is sent to you as it happens. Yes, the pull technologies may add a notification piece to let you know there is information (but those notifications won't thread in your mail reader to recreate the conversations) and the Push technologies have archives that you can go to.
It's a bit like asking why the city bus can't come right when I need it, or the taxi/ride share have a schedule so I can know when it will be there and hop on without needing to make a call. Different platforms work differently and have different strengths (and weaknesses).
Unfortunately, I cannot contribute code to this project. It is not just lack of time (I have my own open-source projects), but I don't know Python yet.
Regards, rdiez
-- Richard Damon
Perhaps I'm being a bit over dramatic, but it does, in my mind, describe what you seem to be doing, You come in and say that the list software isn't working the way you would prefer, but for this conversation, everyone else needs to change how they use the list so you can [...]
You are being a bit over dramatic indeed. I don't pretend that everyone else should change their ways. And I do look into the archives all the time. That is what I am trying to optimise away. I just wish Mailman (or whatever associated component) would help here, like other communication platforms already do.
Like I said, I cannot subscribe to every list I need to ask a question or drop a bug report into. I just have not got enough time. I only go through the mailing list hoops if something is really serious, or if something really bugs me. Unsurprisingly, bureaucracy barriers do have a negative effect on communication after all.
And I do care. I am trying to understand what the problem is. I am trying to convince you guys, because you write mailing list software. This communication activity also counts as "work". If I find the time, I will write it all up in my Wiki, so other people have a quick overview of what the problem is. I am not the only one annoyed by this.
The expectation for a mailing list, is that someone with a question will come and hopefully first browse through the archives (perhaps with a [...]
I have done that. Why do you assume or imply that I had not? I just didn't find anything applicable.
To just barge in and do it 'their own way' is just being impolite. [...]
Would you rather I didn't post then? But like I said, I do look at the archives later on. This is how I realised that you do have a message at the top dated "April 2024". By the way, that is a bit embarrassing for a mailing list for mailing list software. But manually looking at the archives is just unnecessarily time consuming for me.
As far as your mailing list is concerned, you can certainly say that users should accommodate to the way you operate your mailing list. You can start by stating your usage policy here, next to "Mailman Users":
But I still think it is a strange way to treat your users. You know, the people you write the software for. My claim is, that drives many people away. What you consider "unpolite" often comes across as "unforgiving", "unhelpful" or "out of touch with reality" on the other side. After all, you are trying to load unnecessary burden on the shoulders of those users willing to communicate.
Not subscribing is in fact a quite common behaviour. For example, look for "not subscribed" here:
https://sourceforge.net/p/smartmontools/mailman/smartmontools-support/thread...
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/04/msg00012.html
[...] 'Mostly work' is often a problem. Computers need precise procedures, and people tend to expect that they do things right.
No need to be so strict. We face communication problems everyday. Mobile phones fail. Letters get lost. Misunderstandings. Wrong addressee. Server down. The lot. But things are still improving. Surely Mailman and the like can do better!
It's a bit like asking why the city bus can't come right when I need it,
Surely the smartphone app that tells you when the bus comes (or maybe Google Maps) does not get it 100 % right either. But would you rather go back to reading paper timetables from the official source?
Regards, rdiez
I've been using Mailman on Debian for over a decade on dozens of projects. I've never contributed any code. I've never said a word. I just want to thank the team for spending thousands of hours creating a free program that does such an impressive job. Thank you! ~Vince
Vincent F. Heuser, Jr. Hirsh and Heuser Attorneys 3600 Goldsmith Lane Louisville, KY 40220 (502) 458-5879 http://www.hirshandheuser.com vheuser@hirshandheuser.com
----- Original Message ----- From: "R. Diez via Mailman-Users" <mailman-users@python.org> To: "Richard Damon" <Richard@Damon-Family.org> Cc: <mailman-users@python.org> Sent: Friday, February 01, 2019 08:36 AM Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject
Perhaps I'm being a bit over dramatic, but it does, in my mind, describe what you seem to be doing, You come in and say that the list software isn't working the way you would prefer, but for this conversation, everyone else needs to change how they use the list so you can [...]
You are being a bit over dramatic indeed. I don't pretend that everyone else should change their ways. And I do look into the archives all the time. That is what I am trying to optimise away. I just wish Mailman (or whatever associated component) would help here, like other communication platforms already do.
Like I said, I cannot subscribe to every list I need to ask a question or drop a bug report into. I just have not got enough time. I only go through the mailing list hoops if something is really serious, or if something really bugs me. Unsurprisingly, bureaucracy barriers do have a negative effect on communication after all.
And I do care. I am trying to understand what the problem is. I am trying to convince you guys, because you write mailing list software. This communication activity also counts as "work". If I find the time, I will write it all up in my Wiki, so other people have a quick overview of what the problem is. I am not the only one annoyed by this.
The expectation for a mailing list, is that someone with a question will come and hopefully first browse through the archives (perhaps with a [...]
I have done that. Why do you assume or imply that I had not? I just didn't find anything applicable.
To just barge in and do it 'their own way' is just being impolite. [...]
Would you rather I didn't post then? But like I said, I do look at the archives later on. This is how I realised that you do have a message at the top dated "April 2024". By the way, that is a bit embarrassing for a mailing list for mailing list software. But manually looking at the archives is just unnecessarily time consuming for me.
As far as your mailing list is concerned, you can certainly say that users should accommodate to the way you operate your mailing list. You can start by stating your usage policy here, next to "Mailman Users":
But I still think it is a strange way to treat your users. You know, the people you write the software for. My claim is, that drives many people away. What you consider "unpolite" often comes across as "unforgiving", "unhelpful" or "out of touch with reality" on the other side. After all, you are trying to load unnecessary burden on the shoulders of those users willing to communicate.
Not subscribing is in fact a quite common behaviour. For example, look for "not subscribed" here:
https://sourceforge.net/p/smartmontools/mailman/smartmontools-support/thread...
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/04/msg00012.html
[...] 'Mostly work' is often a problem. Computers need precise procedures, and people tend to expect that they do things right.
No need to be so strict. We face communication problems everyday. Mobile phones fail. Letters get lost. Misunderstandings. Wrong addressee. Server down. The lot. But things are still improving. Surely Mailman and the like can do better!
It's a bit like asking why the city bus can't come right when I need it,
Surely the smartphone app that tells you when the bus comes (or maybe Google Maps) does not get it 100 % right either. But would you rather go back to reading paper timetables from the official source?
Regards, rdiez
Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/vince%40vheuser.com
On 2/1/19 5:36 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
[...] 'Mostly work' is often a problem. Computers need precise procedures, and people tend to expect that they do things right.
No need to be so strict.
Easy to say if you're not the one who has to deal with the bug reports.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On 02/01/2019 01:14 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
Of course there is the concept of 'Topic' in a mailing list. Mailman, the web interface, or whatever, does know how to group topics together. That is an obvious feature, because people tend to work/participate in threads.
I believe that what Mailman (2) considers to be a "topic" is considerably different than what you might consider to be a "topic" or "subject" or "thread".
My understanding is that Mailman considers a message to be part of a "topic" if the message has one or more key words defined for the topic. I.e. any message that has SMTP could be one topic, or DNS be another, or Python a third. This is decidedly NOT the "subject" or "thread" meaning of the word "topic" that I think you are using.
What makes this more interesting ~> problematic is that I think Mailman doesn't actually scan the message body for the topic(s) / keyword(s). Instead, I believe it requires the topic(s) / keyword(s) to be listed in the Keywords: header. - I know that I've used procmail to scan (copies of) messages and add the proper topic(s) / keyword(s) to the Keywords: header so that Mailman would see them and use it's topic filter properly. - This was a LONG time ago and I have forgotten almost all of the context. This may no longer be a requirement for current versions of Mailman.
Suffice it to say that Mailman's "Topic" concept is different than concept that you and I have for "topic" / "subject" / "thread".
-- Grant. . . . unix || die
On 02/01/2019 01:14 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
Of course there is the concept of 'Topic' in a mailing list. Mailman, the web interface, or whatever, does know how to group topics together. That is an obvious feature, because people tend to work/participate in threads.
I believe that what Mailman (2) considers to be a "topic" is considerably different than what you might consider to be a "topic" or "subject" or "thread".
My understanding is that Mailman considers a message to be part of a "topic" if the message has one or more key words defined for the topic. I.e. any message that has SMTP could be one topic, or DNS be another, or Python a third. This is decidedly NOT the "subject" or "thread" meaning of the word "topic" that I think you are using.
What makes this more interesting ~> problematic is that I think Mailman doesn't actually scan the message body for the topic(s) / keyword(s). Instead, I believe it requires the topic(s) / keyword(s) to be listed in the Keywords: header. - I know that I've used procmail to scan (copies of) messages and add the proper topic(s) / keyword(s) to the Keywords: header so that Mailman would see them and use it's topic filter properly. - This was a LONG time ago and I have forgotten almost all of the context. This may no longer be a requirement for current versions of Mailman.
Suffice it to say that Mailman's "Topic" concept is different than concept that you and I have for "topic" / "subject" / "thread". Yes, Mailman has a feature call topics, but that is very different then what the OP is asking for. The Mailman 'Topic' operation basically
On 2/1/19 4:44 PM, Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users wrote: provides the ability of the list owner to define topics based on Regex's on the subject (which is helped greatly if posters add the appropriate key words to subjects to allow them to be categorized). I suppose one option that might satisfy the OP would be the ability for the subscriber to add a custom regex as a filter. That way they could get it to filter on the replies they are looking for, and ignore the rest. The biggest issue is that regex's are somewhat archaic for the typical user, but it would only really affect people who try to use it.
-- Richard Damon
On 2/1/19 6:49 PM, Richard Damon wrote:
Yes, Mailman has a feature call topics, but that is very different then what the OP is asking for.
Agreed. (I thought I covered that in my last email. Maybe I wasn't clear.)
The Mailman 'Topic' operation basically provides the ability of the list owner to define topics based on Regex's on the subject (which is helped greatly if posters add the appropriate key words to subjects to allow them to be categorized).
I'm glad to know that Mailman's "Topic" feature (key word matching) works on the subject. I thought it was looking explicitly for the Keywords: header. That does help some.
Of course, that does rely on posters putting proper keywords in the subject. Which is less than reliable.
I have long wished that Mailman's "Topic" feature would also look for keywords in the body in addition to the Subject and Keywords: header.
I feel like Mailman's "Topic" feature is under utilized. :-/
I suppose one option that might satisfy the OP would be the ability for the subscriber to add a custom regex as a filter. That way they could get it to filter on the replies they are looking for, and ignore the rest. The biggest issue is that regex's are somewhat archaic for the typical user, but it would only really affect people who try to use it.
Oy vey. I would be afraid of how that would likely not scale. I also see security implications in that. (Running subscriber specified RegEx (code) on a server.) I also feel like that would be mainly usable for the single user that specified the RE. Or are you proposing that the user specified RE show up as available "Topics" that people can choose to subscribe to?
I feel like this would be best implemented if the poster added a blob of text to their subject and configured their client side MUA filters to mark messages from the mailing list that don't have said blob in the subject as read.
-- Grant. . . . unix || die
On 2/1/19 6:49 PM, Richard Damon wrote:
Yes, Mailman has a feature call topics, but that is very different then what the OP is asking for.
Agreed. (I thought I covered that in my last email. Maybe I wasn't clear.)
The Mailman 'Topic' operation basically provides the ability of the list owner to define topics based on Regex's on the subject (which is helped greatly if posters add the appropriate key words to subjects to allow them to be categorized).
I'm glad to know that Mailman's "Topic" feature (key word matching) works on the subject. I thought it was looking explicitly for the Keywords: header. That does help some.
Of course, that does rely on posters putting proper keywords in the subject. Which is less than reliable. Yes, I have found it not very useful for a general population list. It might work better on a technically focused list, or maybe if implemented at the very beginning of a lists history, and a large percentage of the readers use it, so forgetting to use the right keywords causes a significant drop in visibility.
I have long wished that Mailman's "Topic" feature would also look for keywords in the body in addition to the Subject and Keywords: header.
I feel like Mailman's "Topic" feature is under utilized. :-/
I suppose one option that might satisfy the OP would be the ability for the subscriber to add a custom regex as a filter. That way they could get it to filter on the replies they are looking for, and ignore the rest. The biggest issue is that regex's are somewhat archaic for the typical user, but it would only really affect people who try to use it.
Oy vey. I would be afraid of how that would likely not scale. I also see security implications in that. (Running subscriber specified RegEx (code) on a server.) I also feel like that would be mainly usable for the single user that specified the RE. Or are you proposing that the user specified RE show up as available "Topics" that people can choose to subscribe to? My suggestion would be to allow the subscriber to specify a RE just for
On 2/2/19 1:37 PM, Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users wrote: them, not that it be made available to others. Having an arbitrary user be able to add something to a screen that other users see would be a serious risk. Letting a user run a custom RE to determine if mail would be sent to them shouldn't be a risk, as long as there is no exploitable bug in the RE code that could be exploited with a crafted RE. I suppose you might need to be a bit careful about possible Denial-of-Service attacks with an overly complicated RE
I feel like this would be best implemented if the poster added a blob of text to their subject and configured their client side MUA filters to mark messages from the mailing list that don't have said blob in the subject as read.
Not sure I would like posters adding unique custom 'blobs' to subjects to mark them as their topics, that REALLY doesn't scale. Just programming their MUA to filter out message that don't match the significant core of the base subject would be sufficient, though that does say the 'get' all the emails, they just don't need to read them.
-- Richard Damon
On Saturday 02 February 2019, Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users wrote:
I feel like Mailman's "Topic" feature is under utilized. :-/
Agreed! Oddly none of the 'techie' lists I have ever been on enable this feature. Couple of critter lists that started on Listserve and moved to Mailman do. First learned of Mailman back in 2001 when one of then switched to 2.0.6.
BTW do not see a "Keywords: header." but do see an X-Topics: FOO. With FOO: also appearing in the Subject header.
William
On 2/2/19 12:47 PM, William Bagwell wrote:
BTW do not see a "Keywords: header." but do see an X-Topics: FOO. With FOO: also appearing in the Subject header.
The X-Topics: FOO is because the post matched the FOO topic. A Keywords: header if any is added by the poster with the intent that it will match one or more topics.
I.e., A post will match the FOO topic if any of the FOO keywords/regexps matches either the Subject: or Keywords: (if any) header or Subject: or Keywords: psudo-headers at the beginning of the message body.
Perhaps one reason why Topics aren't more widely used is that prior to Mailman 2.1.20 (31-Mar-2015), they didn't work as documented. This is from the NEWS file for that release.
- The processing of Topics regular expressions has changed. Previously the Topics regexp was compiled in verbose mode but not documented as such which caused some confusion. Also, the documentation indicated that topic keywords could be entered one per line, but these entries were not handled properly. Topics regexps are now compiled in non-verbose mode and multi-line entries are 'ored'. Existing Topics regexps will be converted when the list is updated so they will continue to work.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On 1/31/19 2:11 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I post to a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I then get an e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.
The "topic" feature in Mailman is different. Very few people use it. I need something based on the e-mail subject.
Is there any way to achieve that with Mailman?
Systers Mailman has a 'dlist' (dynamic sublists) feature which may be what you want. This is mentioned at <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2010-August/070057.html>. That post is old and the repo at <https://launchpad.net/systers> mentioned therein is also old, but it still exists although the documentation links in the post and the README files in the repo are all broken.
We have been looking at dlists or something similar for Mailman 3, and Systers also has done Mailman 3 work (see <https://github.com/systers>).
You may be able to port the changes from <https://launchpad.net/systers> to more current Mailman, or perhaps contact Systers for more information. It appears they are still using a Mailman 2.1.12 version with their changes. I.e., see <http://systers.org/mailman/listinfo/>.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
On 31-Jan-19 05:11, R. Diez wrote:
Hi all:
I have the following recurring problem with mailing lists all over the Internet: people do reply to my posts, by they do not address or copy me in their replies. They send their e-mails only to the mailing list. Or they reply to the previous reply, and forget to copy the original poster.
So I do not get a copy of the relevant messages straight away. If need to manually fish their answers from the web interface. If there is one. And then composing e-mails is cumbersome. And the subject threading no longer works properly.
This problem has annoyed me (and other people on the Internet) for a long time.
I cannot subscribe to every mailing list I need to occasionally use. It's far too much. This e-mail is the perfect example of such a come-ask-and-go-again scenario.
If I need to subscribe in order to post a question, I turn off mail delivery straight away.
Getting a digest with all e-mails does not help either. Replying to a single e-mail in this mode is cumbersome too. Besides, I do not want to manually skip other messages which do not interest me.
Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I post to a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I then get an e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.
The "topic" feature in Mailman is different. Very few people use it. I need something based on the e-mail subject.
Is there any way to achieve that with Mailman?
Thanks in advance, rdiez
While I sympathize, I should also point out that this behavior goes against the underlying philosophy of many mailing lists.
In that context, it is viewed as "selfish" to only ask for help while never providing any. If you don't read the list, you can't offer help to others. You don't have to be an 'expert' to be able to answer questions, or to help an 'expert' to understand a novice's point of view. Communities are built from cooperation.
It should be up to a list owner to decide whether or not to enable a feature that facilitates "take but don't give" behavior. The list norms should decide if "ask and run" or "ignore everyone else" is considered anti-social/exploitive or acceptable use.
In my experience, people paid to support a product might be happy with the feature enabled, while a volunteer community might oppose it.
Of course, today you can subscribe to the list and put a client-side filter in your MUA that discards any post that doesn't reference your post. (By subject or "References" header.) That doesn't require any new support in Mailman.
R. Diez via Mailman-Users writes:
I have the following recurring problem with mailing lists all over the Internet: people do reply to my posts, by they do not address or copy me in their replies. They send their e-mails only to the mailing list. Or they reply to the previous reply, and forget to copy the original poster.
A mailing list may send mail to tens, thousands, or millions of people. If you have no connection to them, but post to the list for your own benefit, that is called "spam". It is generally considered somewhere between rude and criminal. At the very least you should establish a minimal connection by subscribing.
This problem has annoyed me (and other people on the Internet) for a long time.
It's not a problem with mailing lists; the kind of interaction you desire is not what they're designed for. That kind of interaction has its place, but the software has to implement a "pull" model so that nobody needs to make any effort to ignore everybody else.
Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I post to a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I then get an e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.
Mailman is not forum software. Mailing lists support communities of people, not question and answer threads. If you want forum behavior, use forum software, or in some applications you can use an issue tracker. If the community prefers mailing lists, they have a reason for that, and you're out of luck: join the community and deal with the mail, or look for replies in the archives.
Is there any way to achieve that with Mailman?
Not as a subscriber, no. Mailing lists simply don't work that way, because they're fundamentally based on a "push" model. The only way to get the behavior you want is to switch to forum or tracker software based on a "pull" model.
It's possible that in a future version of Mailman 3 a feature called "dynamic sublists" will be available, but it is dependent on the poster taking special action to create the thread. It doesn't allow you to exclude all mail except the single thread you're interested in: to get any posts you must subscribe, and then you'll see all thread roots. Of course, you can already have this with an appropriately configured threading mail client, but dynamic sublists save bandwidth and diskspace.
Again, if you want forum behavior, convince the community to use forum software.
Steve
[...] If you have no connection to them, but post to the list for your own benefit, that is called "spam". It is generally considered somewhere between rude and criminal. [...]
Your comments are surprisingly unfair for someone in a mailing list for mailing list software.
Let's take me as an example. I do have a connection with you. I am a user of your software, on multiple mailing lists. And this particular mailing list is open for anybody. It's fine to drop by for a short while. I did not see anywhere any notice that only close affiliates are welcome. Heck, this mailing list is called "users", and not "developers" or "mailman clan only".
I asked about a way around a perceived limitation, and in the face of the answer, I contributed with reasoning and examples (a couple of links) about a missing feature and why it is important. You may not like my view. You may have a strong idea about how mailing list administrators should use your software. But am I spamming? Is this discussion not welcome here then?
Maybe you are implying that only people who read all posts for a few weeks and commit further resources to this project are entitled to voice their matters here. I find this a strange view on how to develop a community. It is rather off-putting.
Other projects have benefited from a bug report or a small patch I sent to their mailing lists. I was never actually subscribed to any of those.
If all this actually bugs you, maybe you can convince you community to make this mailing list private for proven contributors, and leave out those people who probably just want to benefit from your open-source project?
Regards, rdiez
On 1/31/19 12:05 PM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
I asked about a way around a perceived limitation, and in the face of the answer, I contributed with reasoning and examples (a couple of links) about a missing feature and why it is important. You may not like my view. You may have a strong idea about how mailing list administrators should use your software. But am I spamming? Is this discussion not welcome here then?
I don't think anyone said you weren't entitled to post or that your post was unwelcome.
People were responding to your desire to be able to post to a Mailman list (any list, not just this one) and then receive all replies in that thread and only that thread whether or not you were explicitly addressed.
Have you considered that you could subscribe for a while with delivery enabled and then at your end filter out mail from the list that doesn't match your subject or maybe doesn't contain References: to your post.
-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
R. Diez writes:
Your comments are surprisingly unfair for someone in a mailing list for mailing list software.
How would you be a good judge of fairness? Have you been developing mailing list software for twenty years and reading the requests and problems of users daily for that period? We developers have a record of considering what others have to say, and their requests, at least somewhat fairly. If we didn't, Mailman wouldn't be the most popular open source discussion list solution.
Specifically with respect to the comments themselves, consider that in many cases mailing lists deliberately direct replies to themselves, making it fairly inconvenient to reply to author. (I find it a little bit shameful that Mailman explicitly supports that abuse of "Reply-To", but the demand for it is indeed overwhelming.) Most lists I know of do have a "what starts on the list should stay on the list" policy even if not enforced by Reply-To munging. That indicates that these communities desire a coherence that is harmed by the kind of behavior you described if it becomes frequent. I also have some experience with how such features affect the communities that use them (see below).
Let's take me as an example.
But that's the whole problem, you see. In deciding how to improve Mailman, we need to consider not only what some individual posters want, but also communities, their dynamics, and how major changes like this affect them. We think about how mailing lists work, and therefore what they can and cannot do well. The service you want is provided much better by existing forum software and by issue trackers. There has been some ambition to fill that niche with Mailman features (less now that Barry has retired), but web-based tech already exists that does it well, and I don't see how both can be supported well at the same time.
I asked about a way around a perceived limitation,
And I responded that it is not a limitation, it is a feature of the kind of community that mailing lists support best. *This* community does support the mode you requested, you know, just not via Mailman. There's a tracker at gitlab.com. I would expect that these days most communities that develop software do.
I've thought about implementing this in Mailman and came to the conclusion that you can't have both. No pushme-pullyou software does both well because "push by mail" is basically asynchronous while "pull by web" does support useful synchronicity. Both groups of users get frustrated because they don't get the experience they expect.
I've also seen this in practice in groups that move, or try to move, from lists to forums (I don't know of examples of the reverse). There's a general turnover of active posters, with much more specialization in thread participation, and a departure of experts who are overwhelmed by repeated questions and proposals and are disappointed in the decreased information density.
In some cases that may be a desirable effect (even for the "disappointed experts", who waste less time). But our mission is to support the kind of community those experts (and many other users) apparently want.
But am I spamming?
I don't know in general, because it depends on the community and I don't know where you've posted. In many of the mailing lists I participate in the answer would be yes, if you posted to them in that mode.
Here, inasmuch as what you want is technically beyond what Mailman can currently support, there's no problem with posting the question as long as you accept the answer "no, Mailman can't do that and no, there are no plans to support it soon," and don't ask for a personal reply. That is useful to us as we can gauge the amount of support for the request from other users. (Zero, so far.)
Is this discussion not welcome here then?
You got multiple responses, obviously discussion is welcome. But I see no enthusiasm for your proposal from other users. Continuing discussion here doesn't seem profitable.
If you want to become a developer and contribute some of the effort required to provide the features in Mailman 3, subscribe to mailman-developers@python.org and clone the HyperKitty repository from gitlab.com/mailman/hyperkitty. It has some of what you want, but currently it's the tail of the dog. To support the features you want it really would need to wag the dog, which is quite possible.
Or you can just subscribe to mailman-developers and advocate for what you want. But given the current lack of manpower and the many more important tasks that need to be done, it will quickly become tiresome if you don't contribute substantial effort yourself.
Maybe you are implying
No, you're taking insult where none is intended.
Other projects have benefited from a bug report or a small patch I sent to their mailing lists. I was never actually subscribed to any of those.
Since those are for the benefit of those projects, they're not spamming by my definition, though in many cases on this list we prefer they be directed to the tracker. Still, we accept those here for that reason.
If all this actually bugs you,
I don't respond when I'm actually bugged. I just disagree, and don't think the behavior you want supports our mission. If there were demand for it, I'd consider implementing it despite my misgivings (see "Reply-To munging" above). But there isn't, at least not so far.
Regards,
Steve
participants (12)
-
Carl Zwanzig -
Chip Davis -
Christian F Buser -
Grant Taylor -
Keith Seyffarth -
Mark Sapiro -
R. Diez -
Richard Damon -
Stephen J. Turnbull -
tlhackque -
vince＠vheuser.com -
William Bagwell