[Mailman-Developers] Re: [BUG] Users are created as moderated in CVS mailman

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "BG" == Ben Gertzfield <che@debian.org> writes:

>>>>> "BAW" == Barry A Warsaw <barry@wooz.org> writes:

    BAW> I seem to remember some discussion on this topic a week or so
    BAW> ago.  It seemed to me that the consensus was to quarantine
    BAW> new list members by default.  I might be mistaken (about the
    BAW> consensus), but it seems like as reasonable a default as not
    BAW> quarantining them.

    BG> This is VERY VERY VERY bad, Barry.

    BG> Just changing the default from underneath admins who upgrade a
    BG> minor release (heh) from 2.0 to 2.1 will confuse the hell out
    BG> of everyone.

    BG> Whenever a new list is created, the admin will have to BY HAND
    BG> modify it to let new users post; no admin I know is going to
    BG> want to spend the time to do this, since there's no constant
    BG> whining reminder to let new users post.  Users will sign up,
    BG> not be able to post, and complain vociferously that Mailman is
    BG> broken.

    BG> Please reconsider this behavior, as it's completely different
    BG> from Mailman's prior behavior -- but let it be enabled for
    BG> admins who want it that way.

Are we talking about new lists or upgraded lists?  Certainly for
upgraded lists, member moderation flags will only be turned on if the
old list was moderated.  So upgrading an existing list to 2.1 won't
change its behavior.  That indeed would be bad.

For new lists, the default moderation bit value for new members is set
by default_member_moderation, which itself takes its value from
mm_cfg.DEFAULT_DEFAULT_MEMBER_MODERATION.  This latter is set to 1 in
Defaults.py.  I think there's a high degree of latitude here for sites
and lists to define their default behavior.

In addition, in the admindb pages, when you dispose of a posting by a
member, you are given the choice to clear that member's moderation
flag.  I think the process couldn't be easier.

Is this enough?  If not, just to be clear: are you arguing that
DEFAULT_DEFAULT_MEMBER_MODERATION should be factory set to 0?

Here's another idea/compromise: in the screen where you create new
lists through the web, I could easily add another binary toggle, like
"Should your new list quarantine new members?" which would set the
default value for default_member_moderation.

-Barry