[Mailman-Developers] desired functionality for moderators

[Thomas M. Parris]

Dear mailman-developers:

I am beginning to think a bit more seriously about the moderator's interface
to mailman.  I see several issues with the web based interface for
moderators.

1.  moderator edits.
If configured to do so, moderators should have the ability to edit messages.
If they change the contents of the message, a short header should
automatically be inserted that indicated the original message has been
altered by the moderator.  This seems fairly straight forward, and I might
be willing to go out and by a Python book and do it.

2.  html/rtf formatted text and attachments.
The current web form does not help with messages that are submitted with
html/rtf formatting or attachments.  Despite repeated requests, my lists
continue to get such submissions.  I do not allow redistribution of such
messages, but will often convert them to plain text as a service to my
posters (most of whom are clueless).  The only way to implement this would
be do completely overhaul the web interface to be more like a webmail
interface (something like hotmail), that actually renders the message (if it
has html) and seperates out attachments for download.  This is more than I
can take on.

I think see a fairly painless solution to both problems.

1. Offer a list option on moderated lists to automatically forward messages
to the list moderator (possibly  address(es)than the owner(s)).  This would
be the equivalent of a "Defer" coupled with a "forward this message to ..."
so the code base should already exist.

2. The moderator can then send in the message after any necessary
editing/format conversion.

We could stop here, but then all moderated messages would appear to
originate from the moderator.  While some would no doubt ask for it, any
solution that allowed the moderator to "spoof" the sender address back to
the original poster would probably be a bad idea.

Thoughts?

-- Tom