[Mailman-Users] Umbella lists

[Richard Barrett]

On 24 Sep 2004, at 16:08, Chris Barnes wrote:

> I have a question about umbrella lists.
>
> I understand the concept (and use them on my Lsoft Listserv lists).  
> But
> what I am unsure about is how they are implemented in MM.
>
> Please correct my thinking here.
> If you have an umbrella list, it has a group of sublists to which it
> will re-distribute its messages, right?  Then it should do these 2
> things:
>
> a) make sure that a person that is subscribed to multiple sublists only
> gets 1 copy of the message
>
> b) use it's own Subjectprefix (pre-empting the subject prefix of the
> sublists)
>
>
> The problem I have is that this is not what is happening.  Our umbrella
> list is basically acting like the sublists are simple subscribers -
> meaning neither (a) nor (b) above is occurring.
>
>

Unfortunately you are saying what you think umbrella lists should do, 
not understanding what MM does do with them, which is not very much.

What Mailman does is described in the help for the umbrella_list and 
umbrella_member_suffix list attributes on the General Options page of 
the Mailman admin web GUI.

If you want more then you will have to wait for Mailman's volunteer 
developers to do it or become one and do it yourself.

<quote>
umbrella_list (general): Send password reminders to, eg, "-owner" 
address instead of  directly to user.

Set this to yes when this list is intended to cascade only  to other 
mailing lists. When set, meta notices like  confirmations and password 
reminders will be directed to an  address derived from the member's 
address - it will have the  value of "umbrella_member_suffix" appended 
to the member's  account name.
</quote>

<quote>
umbrella_member_suffix (general): Suffix for use when this list is an 
umbrella for other  lists, according to setting of previous 
"umbrella_list"  setting.

When "umbrella_list" is set to indicate that this list has  other 
mailing lists as members, then administrative notices like 
confirmations and password reminders need to not be sent to the  member 
list addresses, but rather to the owner of those member lists. In that 
case, the value of this setting is appended to  the member's account 
name for such notices. `-owner' is the  typical choice. This setting 
has no effect when "umbrella_list"  is "No".
</quote>

> -- 
>
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> Chris Barnes                           AOL IM: CNBarnes
> chris-barnes at tamu.edu                Yahoo IM: chrisnbarnes