[Mailman-Developers] Feedback needed: nodupes patch and reply-to munging per user

[Marc MERLIN]

[I'm  Ccing  mailman-developers  in  case  a  few  people  there  aren't  on
mailman-users, but please reply on mailman-users]

Ben Gertzfield  wrote a patch  which Barry recently included  in mailman-cvs
which allows you to not receive the list  copy of a message in you were Cced
in the headers (nodupes patch).
The idea is  to reproduce the (imo sole useful)  feature of reply-to munging
where people don't get two copies of replies to posts.

After  porting his  patch to  mailman-cvs, I've  written another  patch that
extends this functionality by making reply-to munging a per user option.

The idea  is that  I tried  to provide an  alternative to  listwide reply-to
munging because  I truly belive  that is bad for  many reasons that  I won't
list here again, but if you're curious, have a look at:
http://marc.merlins.org/netrants/listreplyto.html
http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=6693&group_id=1
(please note, this  is _not_ meant to  start a thread on  whether munging is
good or bad)

The idea was to settle this issue for good by offering, in place of listwide
reply-to munging  (which would still be  an option in mailman,  just not one
that most people would need anymore):
- optional non sending of  list posts if you are Cced so  that you don't get
  two copies (nodupes patch, already in CVS)
- per user reply-to munging, if you have list users who just will not accept
  to use reply to all to reply to list posts

Since  there have  always been  endless  arguments on  whether the  listwide
setting should  be on  or off,  I'm hoping that  moving this  to a  per user
option will make most if not all of these arguments go away.

The idea  is that  reply-to munging  would stay off,  users have  the option
(enabled by  default) to not receive  two copies of replies,  and people who
really want  to use reply to  sender to reply  to list posts get  a separate
copy of list posts with a Reply-To header in there.

I've   written  the   per   user   munging  part,   and   announced  it   to
mailman-developers last night:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-developers/2002-March/011068.html

Barry is wondering if this is going to  be useful to other people or not and
would like feedback.
So, could you let us know here  (mailman-users) if you would have use for my
patch or if you have questions/comments about it.
If you think the  patch is stupid and shouldn't be in  mailman, you can tell
us that too :-)
(note that the feature has to be  enabled by the site and list owners, since
it does cause additional processing on your list server)

Thanks,
Marc
-- 
Microsoft is to operating systems & security ....
                                      .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
  
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/   |   Finger marc_f@merlins.org for PGP key