[Mailman-Users] Allowing users to join without specifying passwords

[Mark Roedel]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Norbert Bollow [mailto:nb at thinkcoach.com]
> Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 2:04 AM
> To: mailman-users at python.org
> Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Allowing users to join without specifying
> passwords
> 
> 
>> I definitely hear what Chuq's saying, and what others have
>> asked for quite often.  I'm mulling over ways to make
>> unsubscribing dead simple both for users to accomplish,
>> and for admin's to explain how it's done.
> 
> How about this:  Put a link "to unsubscribe click here" at the
> bottom of every mail you send out.  That link has the
> subscriber's email address embedded in it, and it leads to a CGI

The problem with that, as was pointed out in the recent "is it possible
to use Mailman as an electronic mail-merge program" thread, is that it'd
require messages to be crafted individually for each recipient, which
would be a step backwards in terms of efficiency, and might affect how
well Mailman can scale.

Still, if it were configurable, it's the sort of tradeoff that might
well be worthwhile for some installations...

> program which checks (by means of a reverse DNS lookup) whether
> the IP address from which the click comes belongs to the same
> domain as the email address for which unsubscription is
> requested.
>
> If yes, unsub immediately.

Interesting idea, but I wonder how well it'd work in actual practice.
Do we really want anybody at aol.com to be able to act on behalf of anyone
else in that domain?  

The other thing we'd need to be careful of is our definition of what
constitutes "the same domain".  That'd presumably have to be
configurable on a TLD-by-TLD basis to be able to handle everything from
ibm.com to cambridge.ac.uk or senate.state.tx.us...
 

---
Mark Roedel (roedelm at letu.edu)  ||  "There cannot be a crisis next week.
Systems Programmer / WebMaster  ||   My schedule is already full."
     LeTourneau University      ||                    -- Henry Kissinger