[Mailman-Users] Member list in header/footer

[Phil Stracchino]

On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 11:21:51AM -0400, Scott Barron wrote:
> 
> Well, I managed to add a List-Members: header (along with the other List-*
> headers in Cookheader.py).  Believe me, I think this is just as stupid an idea
> as you do and will try one more time to explain the purpose of mailing list
> software.  You raise some good points that I will bring up to my boss.  The
> problem is he is used to maintaining his "list" as a list of addresses in
> Eudora or something like that (not familiar with that software).

In short, he's an idiot who doesn't understand the difference between a
mailing list and an address book alias.

Try pointing out to your PHB that (a) the extra mailserver load and
network traffic created by his list-members header increases as the square
of the number of subscribers, because if he doubles the number of
subscribers, it's twice as many addresses being spammed to twice as many
people; (b) as he adds subscribers, more and more of each message will be
useless list-members spew, which will not leave his subscribers
well-disposed to him; (c) at a certain point, the list-members header may
start crashing his subscribers' mail clients, which will leave them even
less kindly disposed to him; and (d) any list subscriber who actually
*wants* to see who's on the subscriber list can easily go look at it at
any time.

You might also point out that if he pisses people off enough with item-b
and item-c lossage, they may just unsubscribe and tell him to go blow.

(OK, so the extra header itself isn't actually going to load down the
server or the network that much.  Your PHB doesn't need to know that.)


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