[Mailman-Users] Feature request: Emergency Broadcast

[Bill Catambay]

At 7:32 PM +0900 on 11/23/09, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:


>Bill Catambay writes:
>
>  > 1. Mailman aliases not working (like in my case)
>  > 2. Unable to access my email, but have access to web (which is common
>  > for those of us behind corporate firewalls)
>  > 3. My email is broken, but my internet it still working
>  >
>  > However, even with these reasons, I wouldn't consider it a big deal,
>  > especially if it's difficult to implement.  After my list is working
>  > again, I'll probably forget all about it.  :)
>
>Note that I didn't deny use cases, I said it would be hard to
>implement usefully.  For example, in the case that the mailman aliases
>aren't working, people *will* reply: "when do you expect it back up?"
>Because the mail system is currently not working, these will come
>through in a batch when things are fixed.  What do to about them,
>especially since they're completely useless in this scenario?  There
>is also the issue of what to put in From, and things like that.  Will
>there be one-size-fits-all solution, or will the emergency poster have
>to set them appropriately?  In the latter case, are there traps that
>the poster should avoid?  Do the appropriate settings depend on other
>list settings (eg, reply-to munging)?

Well, for what it's worth, in *my* situation, all posts come to me, 
which I am currently just holding, including "when do you expect it 
back up" but really more of "thanks for all the work you do" 
messages.  This is one of the reasons I like to moderate the list 
this way, as I do often get direct emails that were intended for the 
list, and this way I can read them and appropriately file them (i.e., 
they won't be going out to the list once the list is working).

As far as what to put in the FROM, I would say the name could be 
"Foo-list Emergency Notification", and in the FROM email would be the 
"foo-list" email (which, in my case, come to me), or perhaps just to 
the "foo-list-owner" email (which should work okay for other lists as 
well).