[Mailman-Users] Description text not appearing in "To:" header?

[Mark Sapiro]

Mike Brudenell wrote:
>
>I had, incorrectly by the sound of it, assumed Mailman worked the same way 
>because:
>
>    1)  Mailman's built-in help text for the 'description' setting says:
>
>            description (general): A terse phrase identifying this list.
>            This description is used when the mailing list is listed with
>            other mailing lists, or in headers, and so forth. It should be
>                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>            as succinct as you can get it, while still identifying what the
>            list is.
>
>OK, so the above might refer to the 'header' you can get Mailman to include 
>within the message body up at the top, or it could mean the true headers of 
>messages (ie, the To:/From:/Subject:/Received:/etc header lines).


As I said in my original reply, when the list is anonymous, the
'description' is included in the From: header, so the above, while
misleading in your case, is correct in that the description is used in
some cases in an actual message header.


>By itself it's a bit ambiguous, but then we also have:
>
>    2)  Section 2.1.1 of the Mailman Admin help pages at GNU's site
>        <http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-admin/node10.html>
>        says this:
>
>            description
>            In the general list overview page, which shows you every
>            available mailing list, each list is displayed with a short
>            description. The contents of this variable is that description.
>            Note that in emails from the mailing list, this description is
>            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>            also used in the comment section of the To: address. This text
>            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>            should be relatively short and no longer than one line.
>
>This seems pretty clear, and I also found the same information on other 
>sites' help pages using Google (sadly I didn't note down the URLs for any 
>of these).


Yes, it is clear, but unfortunately, it's wrong.


>I'll just assume that Mailman (now) doesn't/shouldn't rewrite the "To:" 
>header as standard and the Mailman Administration help page is out of date.


And we'll get the manual corrected.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan