[Mailman-Developers] Users, Bounces, and Virtual Domains (was (no subject))

[J C Lawrence]

On Sun, 17 Dec 2000 22:56:50 -0800 
Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui@plaidworks.com> wrote:

>> Okay, let's split this out.  There are five levels and a
>> pseudonymous sixth:
>> 
>> 1) Site owner -- SysAdm for the host 2) Group owner -- Sets group
>> defaults

> If the group owner manages a virtual site , why not call it that?

Gecause groups are a logical construct and may be both larger and
smaller than virtual domains.  A group may consist of the lists
assigned to a particular list owner, lists sharing a common topic, a
virtual domain, or any other structure of divide you may care to
consider.

> If we want to get technical, you have the owner of the mailman
> instance (since a given machine can have multple ones), the owner
> of the virtual host (which may be the only user of the mailman, or
> may share it), the list owner, the list moderator, and the list
> user. I don't see any advantage to breaking it out into finer
> gradiations, or generalizing the functionality beyond that.

The idea of the above group concept is that groups could be used for
virtual hosts, or any other grouping desired.  It really doesn't
matter.  

Consider Python.Org:

  All the python lists could share a group and therefore a set of
  common templates, CSS files etc for their own unique/shared
  configs.  All the pythonic app lists could share another group,
  the SIG lists another group, etc.

In my case I'd group lists into those run by me, and those run by
others (ie not "offocial representatives of Me (tm)".

>> The Group owner runs, say, a vhost and defines the default for a
>> class of lists as well as handling creation of lists within that
>> class.

Vhosts are merely the simplest way of tagging the group concept so
people can grab it and relate it to something they already know and
understand.

> Also UI and graphic definitions for the site, since each site is
> going to wrap a different (do I dare use the term? I dare) skin
> over mailman, and we need to make sure we support that properly.

Quite.  This would be done at the group level.

>> -- Write an arbitrary note that is then associated with a member
>> such that any moderator for that list will see that note when
>> presented with data concerning that member (eg a post held for
>> moderation).

> you know, you just wandered down something I've played with in the
> past but keep forgetting about (mostly, i want it while I'm
> dealing with a problem, but not enough to create it the rest of
> the time) -- the problem/case book. Needs to be list-specific for
> privacy reasons, but there needs to be a way for admins to track
> users and issues, and a generalized note-taking/history-keeping
> function attached to a user_ID and a list would be great for
> this. ("what do you mean you never start fights, last January,
> you...")

I've got some ideas there, mostly centered about tacking a CRM tool
off the side, linked to the AccountID I discussed earlier.  Entries
in the CRM would be tagged with a ListID and would be flagged as
public (can be viewed by other list moderators) or private to the
ListID.

This would exist in parallel to Mailman per se, linked only by a tag
that some module inserts into the Mailman genned HTML...

>> There are of course exceptions:
>> 
>> I want to hand moderate all his posts from his work address
>> because they auto-append legal cruft I want to delete.
>> 
>> He only posts from Yahoo when he's drunk -- unsubscribe that
>> address.

> I expect these situations rare enough I wonder if it's worth even
> considering in the design. 

I had a tough time coming up with good examples.  Okay, better:

  "Hey moderator, yesterday was my last day at XXX and I forgot to
  unsubscribe.  Sorry about that, but would you mind unsubscribing
  me?  In the mean time I'm reading through my home address on the
  same account."

> I'm trying to think the last time I might have used something like
> this, and I can't think of one. they're a nice addition, but I
> think it's solving a problem I'm not convinced shows up often
> enough to worry about.

Which?  By email address or by account?

> but the hotmail attack thing is an indication of just how complex
> and gnarly email is on the net these days, because there really
> isn't much of an easy way to stop something like
> that. Fortunately, it's fairly rare.

One of the programming lists I'm on just had someone take a hotmail
account which they'd already subscribed to 20+ daily porn picture
services, and set it to auto-forward to the list I'm on.  Asides
from the fact that there are some very able photoshop people out
there who should have better things to do with their time, it was
quite difficult finding the account to remove/block (it was an open
posting list).

-- 
J C Lawrence                                       claw@kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--