[Mailman-Users] Feature Request: Selective Mass Subscription

Krystal Zipfel zipfel at greenacrestechnology.com
Tue Jul 15 21:46:52 CEST 2008


Hello Jim,

"I think that by running the server ourselves (and using only addresses
from our domains) warrants this admittedly fascist attitude. Perhaps the safest way to handle this (in future releases) is to make mass-subscribe=NO the default setting for new installs, but not removing the option altogether."

I think you hit the issue right on the nose. As a private entity running 
your own servers, and especially for the use you have it makes perfect 
sense to run it as you are. As a (lifetime) student at Duquesne, it's 
the exact same way. I get e-mailed no matter what, I attend school 
there, that was my opt-in.

But ISP's have a different liability. Just as you control your servers, 
we have to control ours and cannot afford having AT&T block an entire 
server block because someone hit the "spam button" instead of 
unsubscribing (even when legit).

I still like the option you offered, on and off. Adding the ability to 
limit how many in a day or at one time or what have you would be nice as 
well, but everyone has a different purpose in life. :-)

-Krystal


Savoy, Jim wrote:
>  
>    I guess we might be considered a fascist regime, but mass-subscribe
> is an invauable tool here at our university. Hardly any of our lists are
> opt-in (what a nightmare that would be for us - we need our lists up
> and populated on exact dates and ready to roll). We have class lists,
> lab lists, club lists, team lists, student lists, employee lists,
> security lists (some of which contain every soul on our campus - rarely
> ever used (never used yet, in fact, knock wood) for Virginia Tech-type
> campus-wide emergencies, etc).
>
>    Many of the lists are automatically populated by cron on certain
> dates.
> There is very little involvement really, and all of the email addresses
> used
> to populate these lists are from our own domains. Sure we have the odd
> cranky
> professor or student who wants off, and we comply by setting their
> no-mail
> flag for them (unless it's the security list - they have no opt-out
> option
> on that one (and a few others) and that is written into their contract
> when
> they aquire an account from us).
>
>    But in all these years, we've had very few complaints and everything
> has run
> very smoothly. We usually comply quickly if someone wants out, but we
> would
> never in a million years want people to have to opt-in! That would truly
> be
> a disaster (confused users, thousands of phone calls and help queries,
> and
> worst of all, porously-populated, inconsistent lists, with no guarantees
> that
> the right students got critical class/lab-related messages, etc). This
> invisible
> behind-the-scenes subscription method is the way to go for us. None of
> our
> Mailman subscribers even know they have their own list passwords, and we
> don't want them to! (I'd say about .01% are clever/curious enough to
> figure
> it out - I'm not implying that they are dopes, but rather they are just
> overwhelmed by the hundreds of new things they have to learn coming to a
> university - we don't want to pile on with even more stuff they need to
> know).
>
> I think that by running the server ourselves (and using only addresses
> from our
> domains) warrants this admittedly fascist attitude. Perhaps the safest
> way to
> handle this (in future releases) is to make mass-subscribe=NO the
> default setting
> for new installs, but not removing the option altogether. Thanks.
>
>  - jim -
>
> PS I am pretty sure that this discussion only involves removing
> mass-subscribe
>    from the GUI (and not the command line) but many of our lists require
> mass-
>    subscribes on certain dates from the GUI as well (usually conducted
> by the
>    departmental secretaries).
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