[Mailman-Developers] Approach for plugin ideas

[Aanand Shekhar Roy]

Hi Abhilash,
Thanks for guiding me through. I'll work on the details as suggested by
you. :)

> Hi Aanand,
>
> On 23 February 2015 at 17:11, Aanand Shekhar Roy <2013001 at iiitdmj.ac.in>
> wrote:
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> This is my approach for plug-in ideas :
>>
>> BANNED WORDS:
>> 1. We create a common set of words that are to be banned in a mail.
>
> How do you create such a list, who decides which words are banned?
> Will this list be list specific or global to one mailman installation?
> Would it be possible to add/remove words from these lists from postorius?
>
>> 2. In list settings we create an option for list admin to choose action
>> taken if a mail has banned words.
>
> What according to you should be sane default for this? Is is possible that
> the banned words be removed or replaced with ****** and the mail be sent
> to
> the list so as to ease the life of list-admins?
>
>> 3. We need to create a new rule in mailman/src/mailman/rules that checks
>> for banned words in a msg string.
>
> When you mention url relative to a project, you don't need to add the name
> of
> the root directory. Like 'mailman/src/mailman/rules' should be
> 'src/mailman/rules/'.
> Also, include them inside quotes to differentiate it from normal text.
>
>> 4. This rule is to be implemented in
>> mailman/src/mailman/chains/builtin.py
>> where it takes the action as chosen by list admin and then the control
>> is
>> passed further depending on the action taken.
>>
>> CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION CHECK:
>> 1. We need to create another rule which check for confidential info.
>> like
>> phone no and address credit card no. using regexp search.
>
> How do you do that check? How can you differentiate any number from
> phone number,
>  or credit card number? (Using reg-ex, yes, but what would the rules be?)
> Why is address a confidential information and how do you actually decide
> what
> level of confidentiality you want to maintain? Will that be
> configurable per-list or
> globally in a mailman installation?
>
>> 2. If found we hold that message, and then we send an auto-reply to
>> sender
>> asking for confirmation if he
>> intends to post such information.
>> 3. This system works similar to the mail-back verification procedure
>> during confirmation of email while subscribing where potential
>> subscriber's reply decides the further action to be taken.
>
> How will you parse the response of the sender, will there be a
> pre-defined format
> like email commands in mailman? Will you provide option in postorius too
> for the
> same? If yes, how?
>
>> 4.Based on the user's response the held message will be processed
>> further.
>
> Where will the message be stored while mailman waits for the reply
> from the sender?
> Will there be a timeout for response after which the email will
> automatically be
> rejected (or discarded? ) or will mailman wait forever for the
> response? If you plan
> to timeout what would be default value?
>
>> TIMED VACATION:
>>  In  member's preference form we already have an option for enabling and
>> disabling mail delivery. We can
>> extend it to another option called "Vacation period" which takes the
>> duration of vacation and disables receiving emails and
>> automatically enables mails after the vacation period ends.
>
> This project is about *plugins* and not extending core to do such things.
> Once it is decided what and how the filtering is to be done, its fairly
> easy to
> write a  rule. What you need to figure out is how to actually add this as
> an
> optional plug-in to mailman. If you make the options configurable by
> list-admin
>  you would need to add options in postorius as well, again as a plug-in.
>
> Have you read if mailman supports plug-ins at all right now? If yes, how?
> If no,
> how will you do that? You have suggested 4 ideas for plugins, but I
> think it would
> be better if you choose any two of them which you can best implement in
> the time
> frame given to you. In case you finish early, you can extend your
> project and create
> more plugins.
>
> I hope my questions help you figure out the minute details of your
> project.
>
> thanks,
> Abhilash
>