[Mailman-Users] Re: remove this?

[Bill Warner]

At 08:20 AM 5/11/01 -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
>But e-mail interacts with other email systems all over the internet. When
>you hose a mailman system, it affects the mail systems of all of the
>subscribers, which potentially hoses them AND the admins of THEIR mail
>servers.

But, with the exclusion of Nigel's generalized suggestion, what we've been 
talking about so far just doesn't do that.  Leaving the List-Subscribe 
header, to take just one example, off of a closed list that doesn't accept 
public subscription requests is not going to hose anyones system.  It will 
not affect the routing, transport, or delivery of the messages on that list 
or of anything else in the known universe.

It will simply allow a list admin to use the List-* headers in the way that 
they were intended.  Which is to allow the list admin to provide a useful 
and convenient tool to *his (or her) subscribers*, and at the same time 
reduce the headaches of being a list admin by reducing the number of "how 
do I unsubscribe"-type requests.

>That's why SOME of these decisions have to be made by the people who know
>the issues, instead of run off and make decisions based on the "I wanna, 
>so you gotta" style of management.

I submit that Grant Neufeld is one "who know(s) the issues" well enough 
that his published statement ought to at least merit consideration.  I 
personally think it merits more than that, but...

It's not about "I wanna, so you gotta."  I'm sorry if you see it that 
way.  Neither should it be about "we're the experts, we did it right, and 
you peons don't know what you talking about."  It is, at least I think it 
should be, about discussing the differing points of view and then making a 
decision that benefits the Mailman community as a whole.  That community 
includes people outside the development circle.  I've now spent a lot of 
time reading the threads about this issue back through the archive of this 
list, and I just don't see where that happened.  As far as I can tell the 
decision was made early on, and once implemented anyone who questioned it 
was promptly stomped on.

In any case, I believe that the case in favor of making the List-* headers 
configurable has been sufficiently made, and that Barry will indeed give it 
fair consideration.  That's all I ask.  I'm not demanding anything.

So, now I really am done.  Ya'll can carry on with this thread if you like, 
but I'm going to take a break and then see what kind of firestorm breaks 
out when I ask the other questions that I have on the back burner.

Happy Mailmanning!

--Bill
------
"The list administrator should be able to turn individual header fields on 
or off on a per-list basis." - Grant Neufeld, Author, RFC2369.
http://www.nisto.com/listspec/server-author.html