[Mailman-Users] Curious about email confirmations for list owners...

[Mark Sapiro]

Glenn Sieb wrote:
>
>When confirming the posting of a moderated message via email, "Why 
>doesn't this work the way it says?" (their words, not mine..)
>
>My observation: When the post comes through for approval, you an email 
>with two attachments: First part is the web interface link, second 
>(first attachment) the email that's being moderated, and third (second 
>attachment) is how to confirm via email.
>
>The problem is--you can't hit "reply" -- this does not work. Even 
>though, to the layperson, it says to do so, since clients like 
>Thunderbird and such show the text attachments inline. This is more 
>pilot-error than anything, but it is confusing for non-techies, admittedly.


Unfortunately, this is MUA dependent. In some MUA's, if you actually
open the attached message, you can reply to it and it will work. In
Tbird 2.0 at least, you can click on the icon for the third part, and
it will open in a new window, and you can reply in that window, and it
works.


>But, even more of a curiosity--if you open the attached email that says 
>"confirm <confirmationcode>"--and hit reply--*THAT* doesn't work. The 
>Subject: and To: headers are not set correctly. I use Thunderbird, some 
>of the others use T-bird or Outcrack. From what I am gathering from the 
>new mods, this is the same for both. I run a Mac so I don't run Outcrack 
>to test with (nor do I really want to run Outcrack *blecch*).


It works for me with Tbird 2.0 (IIRC it didn't work with older Tbird).
It also works with Mutt, and I think I have observed in the past that
it works with MS Outlook express.


>I admit, that this took me three tries to get it right, and that 
>involved just creating a new email, doing a copy/paste of the Subject 
>line and making sure the email went to (listname)-request at ...
>
>Are I/we doing this wrong? While I wholeheartedly support using the web 
>interface for these things, I can understand why someone would just want 
>to hit <Reply> type in the Approved: listpassword header, and do things 
>that way, as well.


As I said above, it's MUA dependent. In any case, if the MUA shows all
the parts inline, replying in that view wont work without editing the
recipient and subject of the reply, but most (I think) MUAs that allow
you to open/view the specific message part and reply to it will work.

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