[Mailman-Users] Some observations and suggestions...

[Peter Hamilton]

Hi folks,
  At the Association of C & C++ Users, we run 25 Majordomo mailing lists,
these will be gradually moving over to Mailman.

Whilst running a couple of small lists for a local Caving club, a few
issues came to light (whilst reading this bear in mind that unlike ACCU
members, most of the Cavers are very much at the novice level with regard
to email).  Currently I'm running v2.0.3.

The confirm message:
-------------------
  I've modified verify.txt, most users found the original wording
  confusing.  It now emphasizes the simplest way to confirm - hit
  reply button (but make sure the Subject line is etc, etc..).

Listinfo:
--------
  listinfo.html was also modified, as several users complained they
  were confused about the Admin address and Password boxes for
  viewing the subscriber list ("do I have to type something in these
  boxes to subscribe?" they ask).
  This, and the question about batched mail I've removed.  People
  were checking the daily digest button, then complaining about receiving
  mail only once a day!

These are tweaks that beginners found useful, personally I found the
default templates fine (I'm NOT suggesting changes to the distribution!).

Internet Mail Service (some sort of MS mailer?):
---------------------
  This broke the Subject line into two lines like so:

  Subject: RE: Wcms-announce -- confirmation of subscription -- request 6715
          58

Outlook Express:
---------------
  The default installation of Outlook Express seems to send all text as
  a text/plain attachment, plus a text/html attachment.  If subscribers
  don't return the default Subject: line (and try to use "confirm 330970"
  in the message body instead), Mailman can't understand the attachments
  and fails to confirm.

  This problem was easy to fix by putting a mime stripper program into
  the request address alias entry (already do this to prevent viruses
  and attachments in the discussion lists).  This strips out the html and
  flattens the text attachment to non-attached, allowing confirms to work
  correctly.

Features for Mailman 3
----------------------
For me, the most useful feature on the Mailman todo list would be
user accounts with multiple email addresses.  It would be nice to have
everything accessable under a single username and password (all mailing
list subscriptions, and with a bit of custom scripting, website password
protected areas, club subscription details, etc).

All the best, Pete.
-- 
Peter Hamilton, Webmaster: www.accu.org - The Association of C & C++ Users.