[Mailman-Users] understanding topics

[Mark Sapiro]

Joseph Cain wrote:

>I am setting up topics on one of our lists and am a bit perplexed about 
>the "yes" option that follows.
>
>I have some subscribers that are burned out one reading about one topic 
>and would like to be able to exclude receiving any more posts to it. 
>Will the following recipe work?
>
>first, I set up a topic that most anyone would want to select, like 
>"burglary" or "police" for example since this is a neighborhood list and 
>most everyone wants to know about criminal activity.
>
>I then set a few topics including the one they don't want to see any more 
>about.
>
>I suggest they check only the burglary topic, but then put "yes" in the
>selection that follows.
>
>Is it true then that they will NOT receive posts to the
>available topics they do not check, and all others that do not match any 
>topic key word, or will it mean they would receive all posts anyway? If 
>it is the latter, why does the yes/no option exist?


It's neither. Under the situation you've described, the user will
receive all messages that match the topics they select and all
messages which don't match any topic. They will not receive messages
which match some topic(s) but not any they selected.

The Yes/No selection simply controls whether they do or don't receive
posts that don't match any topic, if they've selected at least one
topic.

If they select no topics, they receive all posts regardless of the
Yes/No setting.

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