[Mailman-Developers] Mailman limitations

[Harald Meland]

[Thomas Wouters]

> On Sat, Feb 12, 2000 at 12:23:47PM -0800, Edward Elhauge wrote:
> 
> > What I don't like is that I can't run the lists on autopilot mode.
> 
> I'm not sure what would constitute autopilot mode. I concur that some things
> in Mailman could be made more selfreliant, like bluntly refusing some
> messages, but making it work right all the time is pretty hard.

Ummm, yes -- if by "working right" you mean "reject the messages the
admin _wants_ to have rejected, regardless of how list is actually
configured" :)

What I think is needed (as a start), are variants of the various
"blocks" we have in place now, which would discard (into the big bit
bucket, with no message to the sender) or reject (send the message
back to the sender) incoming messages, as opposed to just "holding"
them.

There are some issues to be resolved with this, of course.

For one, it shouldn't be too easy for Mailman list administrators to
misconfigure their lists in a fashion that discards (or, possibly,
rejects) incoming messages -- as that might lead to Mailman seeming
reckless with incoming messages.  Deciding upon exactly what "too
easy" means in terms of implementation is, of course, the hard part.

Next, there's the issue of not over-complicating the admin pages.
Ideally, we'd like to support as big a set of (good :) features as any
other mailing list administration package, but without alienating
first-time Mailman list administrators through a veritable maze of
list settings, all of them interconnected...  Good documentation might
solve part of this, but if there are (overly) complex features the
corresponding documentation will probably have to be complex as well,
meaning that the Mailman learning curve gets steeper.

> I can't say for certain what parts are currently being developped,
> though, I'm relatively new on this list, and a lot of development
> seems to happen behind the scenes.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but just to clarify: I try
to keep/redirect whatever discussions on Mailman development I get
involved in to this list.  However, I've "been away" for some time,
busy doing Real Work -- part of which was to implement new Mailman
features that we here at uio.no were in pressing need of.

I don't want to give anyone the idea that the direction of Mailman
development is not properly influenced by the input from the members
on this list -- after all, discussing Mailman development is what this
list is for.


Cheers,
-- 
Harald