[Mailman-Developers] member-sets composed of member-sets for other Mailman-lists

[Harald Meland]

Hi,

I am more and more frequently getting reqests for mailing lists that
reach the union of members of other mailing lists (all these mailing
lists are Mailman controlled).

The Mailman concept of umbrella lists doesn't quite cut it, as I find
it a hack to solve a specific case -- i.e. it is not general enough.
Besides, how can you (safely) set up an umbrella list to have any
message inserted into some level of the hierarchy only generate _one_
request for moderator approval?  Various heuristics based on looking
at mail headers isn't reqally my idea of a "Good, Clean Solution" :)

Thus, my request:

  Could Mailman accept some special syntax member address (being
  invalid in the SMTP sense) for including all members of another
  Mailman list (under the same Mailman installation) into this list?

  I.e., if the list "all-students" has this member list:

    some.supervisor@some-faculty.my.domain
    another.non.student@administration.my.domain
    [students-spring-1998]
    [students-fall-1998]

  , then the union of the regular addresses on the "all-students" list
  and the (recursively) expanded member list of the included lists
  ("students-spring-1998" and "students-fall-1998") is the real member
  list of the "all-students" list.

  Adding these "include other list" addresses should only be possible
  via the admin web interface (i.e. not possible via the regular "I
  want to subscribe" user web interface).


  The whole issue with where to send the password reminders and such
  would go away -- send out password reminders to members subscribed
  via lists that are configured to do so (and users wouldn't even have
  a separate password, let alone separate subscription options for
  lists they are indirectly subscribed to.  I consider this coarse
  granularity a feature, YMMV).


  It would also be nice if there was some provision for regulating
  which administrators were allowed to include what other lists into
  their own lists -- e.g., a first approximation could be:

    If the intersection of the sets of administrators of the including
    and the included lists is the empty set, disallow inclusion.

  Such "privileges control" will, of course, be easier to implement as
  administrators get their own Mailman object (to be worked on after
  1.0 is finally out the door).

So, what do y'all think?
-- 
Harald