[Mailman-Users] Replying to digests

[Clare Redstone]

Thanks for this very helpful reply, Mark.

I'm going to follow your advice and mainly aim at training members. I do
want to be flexible about this though: some infrequent posters have some
very good things to say that will help us all. But they're also probably
more likely to be a bit computer-fearful and want digests because busy
inboxes confound them but not be aware of editing subject and body. I really
don't want to be so strict that I frighten them off posting.

So:

Step 1a, filtering "digest" from headers will pick up most and I'll send
those back to members to clean up for themselves. (But sometimes do what I
can myself-see below.)

Step 1b, I'll set default as MIME which will help in some cases, depending
on MUA.

Step 2, set repeat offenders to moderate, or if it's a widespread problem,
every now and then check through the subscriber list and set all digest
people to moderate.

I might exceptionally see if I can edit and resend messages when I think
it's particularly worth it and the sender likely to be flummoxed by being
asked to clean and resend. I'm having trouble following the instructions
though.

I use Outlook 2007 on Windows XP so don't have Mutt.

>> What you can do depends on your MUA. I do the
following occasionally (when a quoted digest is held for size). I have
admin_immed_notify set to yes, so I receive a notice containing the
post as part 2 of 3 message parts. First, I discard the original held
message. Then, using Mutt, I open the notice and then the
message/rfc822 part containing the post, edit it...<<

In Outlook, I get an email telling me there's a message waiting for
authorisation, with 2 attachments: one called by the post subject and the
other called "confirm 2ff72..." long string of numbers/letters.

Test 1. "Subject" is the actual rogue post. I can use reply or forward, edit
the message and address it to the list. I changed options to send in plain
text, wrote approved: password at the top of the body and, just below that,
changed the line "To: testlist at ..." to "Resent-To: testlist@ ..."

The message made it through OK, but appears to be from me instead of from
the original sender, and has the headers written at the top of the body of
the message in the same way any replied to or forwarded email would have
(albeit changed to Resent-To.)

So I've got it working in part and this will do if there isn't a
straightforward solution. The "approved" bit worked and I could edit the
message, but how do I make a "Resent-To" instead of a "Forward?"

Which is what I think you mean by:
 >>and then 'bounce' it
to the list. 'Bounce' is Mutt's term for resending the original
message to additional recipients. This is not forwarding; it is
resending with the original headers. Not all MUAs can do this.<<

Is it possible in Outlook?

Another odd thing is that although it's been approved (via email) and
received by list members, the original post is still sitting in the admin
queue on the web interface. So I'll need to remember to delete it manually.

One of the wiki pages you linked to, about editing messages before approving
them (thank you, very helpful) says,

>>If this feature is not available in your MUA, you can still post the
edited message directly if you are on a
machine with an MTA, e.g., sendmail, etc., by saving the edited message in a
file and giving a command
similar to the following:
/path/to/sendmail list at example.com < edited_message_file<<

I haven't a clue what any of that means so guess it's beyond me.

Thanks for the other links too. I'll explore them but after a quick read, I
think it's likely to be beyond me. Good advice too about server space being
so cheap compared with the amount of time I could spend tidying up digests
and archives.

Thank you again for such a helpful reply. Any solutions getting Resent-To
(Bounce?) to work through Outlook?

Clare

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Sapiro [mailto:mark at msapiro.net] 
Sent: 29 December 2009 15:06
To: Clare Redstone; mailman-users at python.org
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Replying to digests

Clare Redstone wrote:
>
>I'm in the process of setting up Mailman for a discussion group of about
100
>members. From past experience, I know some people will prefer to have
digest
>but they'll also probably just hit the "reply" button without editing the
>subject or deleting anything automatically included. I think this will mean
>their replies will contain the entire digest: difficult to work out which
>message they're replying to and using archive space on the server.
>
> 
>
>1.       How do I stop this happening?
>
> 
>
>At the moment, the only thing I can think of is to filter out messages
>containing "digest" in the subject line and hold those for moderation.


You can do that with Privacy options ... -> Spam filters ->
header_filter_rules, or you can just moderate all members or all
digest members and reject their posts until they learn. You can also
set General Options -> max_message_size small enough to catch these.
In particular, if digests are triggered on size only, you should be
able to find a sweet spot that will catch all quoted digests but not
most 'good' posts.	


>2.       Can I also filter messages with "digest" in the body? I can't see
>where to do this in the administrative interface.


No. Filtering on anything in the message body requires a custom
handler. See the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/l4A9>.


>3.       When I'm reviewing a message held for moderation, can I edit it to
>remove unwanted bits of the digest? I need to do this without altering the
>sender's details so members know the message is from them and not from me?
>When I click on the message in the moderation queue, I can see a message
>excerpt but can't see how to edit it.


Without source modifications, you can't edit a held message from the
admindb interface. What you can do depends on your MUA. I do the
following occasionally (when a quoted digest is held for size). I have
admin_immed_notify set to yes, so I receive a notice containing the
post as part 2 of 3 message parts. First, I discard the original held
message. Then, using Mutt, I open the notice and then the
message/rfc822 part containing the post, edit it and then 'bounce' it
to the list. 'Bounce' is Mutt's term for resending the original
message to additional recipients. This is not forwarding; it is
resending with the original headers. Not all MUAs can do this.

Also see the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/24A9>.

OTOH, you'll get more mileage in the long run by rejecting the post and
requiring the user to generate a proper reply.


>4.       If messages have got through with lots of unwanted text, is it
>possible for me to edit them in the archive? Otherwise my archive may be
>unnecessarily large and I can't afford endless server space.


This requires shell access to the server. See the FAQ at
<http://wiki.list.org/x/OAB0>. (Note: These days, file space is a lot
cheaper than your time to do this, even if you do it as a hobby.)


Also note that if the members subscribe to the MIME format digest (make
it the default), many MUAs allow opening an individual message from
the digest and replying to it alone. It might be easier to train your
users if they have this ability.

Aside: I would think this behavior would be self correcting as it
renders digests (particularly plain format digests) virtually
unreadable, but the ability of users to blindly act in opposition to
their own interests continues to amaze me. I guess that when replying
to the current digest, the readability of the next digest is what
economists call an externality.

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