[Mailman-Users] Feature Request: Selective Mass Subscription

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Zbigniew Szalbot writes:

 > 1/ Mailman as a discussion list - like the one we're having here. I 
 > don't imagine spammers would be setting up their lists as discussion 
 > list, would they? I don't actually imagine big time spammers using 
 > mailman. They're all about botnets.

Big time spammers won't use Mailman, true, but we can't predict how
they will format their messages.  If formatting messages like Mailman
discussion lists makes it more likely they'll be delivered to end
users, they'll do that.  They avoid getting return mail simply by not
running MTA servers!

 > I'd love to see Mailman giving me an option to create either
 > discussion or announcement list with pre-set features for each of
 > them. One of these pre-sets could be in fact the presence or
 > absence of mass-subscribe feature defined per list during list
 > creation.

Barry for Mailman 3 has been talking about making Mailman easier to
configure, and I'm sure Mark would consider adding improved config
tools to 2.2.  But (my impression is that) all of the developers have
Usenet/devel list backgrounds.  Clear and detailed lists of needed
features, eg, what currently unconfigurable behavior needs to be
configurable, and how.  So the mass subscribe feature is a good
example of a configuration need, and it needs not only to be on/off,
but some kind of rate limit seems to be desirable.  (Even though
Cyndi's ISP decided not to allow it, it was attractive enough that
they considered it seriously.)

I think these features would be best described on the wiki (but there
doesn't seem to be an obvious place for the community's wishlist as
opposed to developer proposals), and discussed on mailman-developers.

 > However, if I understand the current trends, discussion lists are
 > dropped in favour of online forums and newsletter/marketing tools
 > are more and more sought after.

On the other hand, the people who can actually contribute code to
Mailman are so far more versed in the discussion lists.

 > This is a market to gain for Mailman but it currently lacks a few
 > features to do that. Well, my post is slowly getting off topic

But IMO it would be quite on-topic for mailman-developers.  This kind
of post would be more effective in inciting dev activity if more
focused.  Eg, rather than talking about "markets to gain", which
sounds good but generally doesn't attract a lot of dev effort, talk
about specific tasks and their needs, and the specific features that
could be extended or added to satisfy them.  Remember, AIUI at least,
the devs have little experience with these usages so concrete details
of requirements would be very helpful.