[Mailman-Users] Re: cleartext passwords

[Chuq Von Rospach]

At 12:32 PM -0700 10/2/00, J C Lawrence wrote:
>Its purely there so that someone away from their normal accounts can
>continue to operate.  Look at it this way:
>
>Given the confirm business:
>
>   Authentication is two level: you know the subscription address and
>   you get mail sent to it.
>
>Given a password:
>
>   Authentication is two level: you know the subscription address and
>   the password associated with it.

But, how much work is this, and what does it accomplish that simply 
e-mailing the admin for help in a case like this doesn't? And how 
many users would actually do it?

On my lists, I can honestly say that the percentage of users who'd do 
this is well under 1% (I say this with some confidence, since I've 
run MLMs with functionality like this in the past). I think my user 
base is fairly typical. I can't justify spending lots of programming 
resources on functions that only the hard-core off-the-bell-curve 
folks (like some list-admins, but I'd bet most folks on this list 
running mailman wouldn't use this!) would use.

Is this a feature for general use? In theory, maybe. In practice, no. 
So why put much programming energy into it?

Nice to have, low priority. IMHO.

-- 
Chuq Von Rospach - Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:chuqui at plaidworks.com)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:chuq at apple.com)

You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die.