[Mailman-Developers] New RFC on using DKIM with MLMs

[Barry Warsaw]

On Oct 29, 2011, at 06:39 AM, Patrick Ben Koetter wrote:

>I suggest we use the term 'Mediator' as introduced by D. Crocker in RFC 5598
><http://www.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc5598.txt> instead:
>
>   A Mediator attempts to preserve the original Author's information in
>   the message it reformulates but is permitted to make meaningful
>   changes to the message content or envelope.
>
>   A Mediator's role is complex and contingent, for example, modifying
>   and adding content or regulating which Users are allowed to
>   participate and when.  The common example of this role is a group
>   Mailing List.
>
>   (see section "2.1.4. Mediator" and also section "5. Mediators")

That makes a good case for Mediator.

>Hmm, if there are no intermediate processes between receiving a message and
>approving it a List-Approved-Date seems fine. But if there are we run into the
>same problem as described below with List-Archived-Date - you can't tell when
>it was queued and when processing took place.
>
>Adding a second header might make the useful distinction:
>
>List-Received-Date
>        RFC 2822 date timestamp when message was received by MLM
>
>List-Approved-Date
>        RFC 2822 date timestamp when message was approved by moderator

What if the message is automatically approved?  Does it get a
List-Approved-Date header?  Merging with Murray's concept of Received states,
it might just make more sense to put all that information into Received
headers.

>> Another header that might be useful here would be List-Approved-By which
>> could be the name or email address of the moderator who approved it.  Right
>> now, MM3 doesn't fill that in, and it could of course be filled in by say
>> list-owner at example.com, but in MM3 it could be potentially filled in with
>> the preferred address for the moderator that approved it.
>
>I see the benefit because it helps if you moderate in a team. But I fear the
>anger of people whose postings we decline. They search for moderator
>identities and then start molesting them e.g. by subscribing them to mailing
>lists that don't require opt-in. (Happend to me python.org postmaster. The
>angry person subscribed my address to various pr0n mailing lists and it took
>me weeks to get unsubscribed.)

Good point.  I do want to provide the opportunity to "anonymize" ownership
roles via generic owner email addresses.  E.g. on the listinfo page.

>ACK with the notion that hashtag seems to closely realted with twitter and a
>more general 'tag' would stay away from that.
>
>Is there or should there be a distinction between 'tag' and http 'keywords'
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element#The_keywords_attribute>? Should we
>use 'keywords' instead?

We can't use Keywords, because that header is already used as input to various
functions such as the topic tagger.  We have to use a different header for
"output".  I can't think of anything better than List-Tags though.

>List-Archive-Send-Date
>        'List-Archive-Send-Date' sounds pretty clumsy and overly long. OTOH we
>        needn't care, as it will only be added to messages that go to the
>        archive, right?
>
>Archive-Transmit-Date, Archive-Transfer-Date, Archiv-Transfer
>        Marks the beginning in opposition to Archive-Received-Date or
>        Archive-Received. But then again an archiver could simply add a
>        Received:-header!
>
>Not an easy one.

Agreed. :/

-Barry