[Mailman-Users] Stupid newbie request

[Bob Landman]

Gary,
 
Thanks for the advice, we'll give it a try.  I've a friend who is an IT manager and he maintains a Mailman list and he's one who wants to solve this issue so I'll have him give it a go and contribute to the RFE if necessary.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: mailman-users-bounces+rlandman=hlinstruments.com at python.org [mailto:mailman-users-bounces+rlandman=hlinstruments.com at python.org] On Behalf Of Gary Hall
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 12:22 PM
To: Mailman Users Group
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Stupid newbie request

Hi Bob,

I agree that there should be a way to download the list and asked that question a while back.

Basically this is what they said ro me.

"The alternatives if you only have web access are also described in the FAQ. Both Jim's and my scripts work and have been used on lists with thousands of members. They require you to install Python, and the ClientCookie package if Python is pre 2.4, on your personal computer/workstation, but once that is done, they are simple to use.

The also said that there is already an RFE at:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1156871&group_id=103&atid=350103.
If that doesn't describe what you want, you can add a comment or a new RFE."

Gary

Bob Landman wrote:

>Peter Green
>Fri, 18 Aug 2006 02:44:54 -0700 wrote....
>
>Apologies for this, but...
>
>I can't get my lists to return a list of those members subscribed to 
>them. I have followed the email commands in the FAQ and get replies 
>saying that my command 'WHO' has been run, but I don't get a list in 
>the way that I am used to with Listerver.
>========
>Peter,
>
>You should not apologize; it's not a dumb question at all.  I know several intelligent IT people who have tried and failed to do this (not me - I'm no IT genius - I'm an EE not a software guru).  I've been managing Mailman lists for several years.  Every experiment I've tried to elicit a list of members has failed.  
>
>I did as instructed and sent in the body of the mail "who password" to mylist-request at mylist.net and what came back was my who request, but no list of members.
>
>In the documentation it says:
>
>"3.62. How do I extract a list of my list's members (subscribers)?
>The preferred way to do this is via the command line tool bin/list_members, but many list owners do not have access to this tool."
>
>I think this is "the" problem.  The writers must have assumed that everyone has access to command line.  I don't as I use a commercial website which hosts Mailman as a service.  
>
>Also note that the FAQ also later on says:
>
>"- Visit the admin Membership Management...->Membership List pages one by one and copy/paste/edit the results."
>
>Groan - they aren't kidding.  I think that's very telling.  And a very ugly solution when you have hundreds of subscribers as I do AND when the list crashes at the website provider (and of course their backup was corrupted as the script wasn't backing up the Mailman subscriber list).  Murphy's Law you know.
>
>So what I did when the crash happened was to painfully go over all saved subscription requests (fortunately I had saved every one and I recommend all do that) manually filtering out those who later insubscribed and re-entered the rermainders in a text file which I, of course, saved.  I then pasted that into the Admin console Mass Subscription form.  550+ names - took me what seemed like forver to do that.
>
>I'm not the only one who wants an easy way via the Admin console (so you don't have to make the membership list query available to all members (the instructions say the program is anal and won't let you as admin request the list until you do that [and I tried that too and it didn't matter] to generate a list of subscribers in text format that can be saved locally.  It does not have to be e-mailed, it can be a window in the console that can be copied and pasted into a text file.
>
>Please, won't someone provide this feature?  It's basic to list administration.
>
>Bob Landman
>H&L Instruments, LLC
>www.hlinstruments.com
>  
>
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