[Mailman-Users] add_members

[Bryan Carbonnell]

On 2/28/06, Dragon <dragon at crimson-dragon.com> wrote:

> OK, I still don't understand the real issue here nor exactly how this would
> be setup. It sounds like more time will be expended setting this up than it
> would take to actually add a bunch of people to the non-member accept list.

It depends on who's time you consider more valuable. You the admin
trying to take care of the lists, possibly the mailman install or even
the actual server.

> It takes me all of a minute to add somebody to that list and it is rare
> that I even get a request to do it. I can only see that becoming a real
> time issue on huge lists with lots of people who want to post from an
> alternate address. In my case, this is extremely unlikely to happen so I go
> with the simpler approach.

For me the issue is time. If someone wants to post from an alternate
address, I have stock text that I copy & paste into an e-mail and hit
send. I can post the text of the e-mail later this evening if you'd
like. It details the steps the user has to take to subscribe
themselves from a second address and then postpone it.

If I added them manually, then I would have to add them, change their
address when it changes, and it does, and remove them when they no
longer want to post from that address. I also then have to let the
other admins know what is going on in case "I get hit by a truck".

Much easier to have the user do it themselves.

I also believe there would be a performance hit on the server (just an
assumption nothing I've ever tested) because of having to check the 
non-member accept list, especially if it gets large. I don't know if
the performace hit is even an issue, but it's something to consider.

I probably got about 3 or 4 requests a month when I first took over
the admin of the lists, now it's down to 1 every few months, since
most of the users now know how to do it themselves. I actually see
unsubs and resubs from different addresses for the same user on a
fairly regular basis, so I know that the requests would stay high for
this kind of thing if I hadn't educated the users on how to do it
themselves.

Granted the lists I administer are populated by extremely tech savy
users (MS Access developers list is the main one) so that probably
doesn't hurt.

Having said all that, your approach works well for you and mine works
well for me. 2 different ways to accomplish the same goal.

--
Bryan Carbonnell - carbonnb at gmail.com
Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well
preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out,
shouting "What a great ride!"