[Mailman-Users] making the "Your name" Field required

[Mark Sapiro]

On 9/2/2010 12:00 PM, Doug Warren wrote:
>  
> I am new to mailman and just learning the basics. I am looking for away to make 
> the "your name" field on the subscription page required for our private list. I 
> have changed the (optional) to (required) on the screen but I have been unable 
> to find out how to get the list to make it a mandatory field. I am hoping 
> someone will be able to give me some pointers on this.


This is tricky. Presumably you know how to edit the listinfo template to
change (optional) to (required). You will note that the actual text box
for entry of the real name is generated by the tag <mm-fullname-box> in
the listinfo template. This tag expands to <INPUT type="Text"
name="fullname" size="30" value=""> in the generated HTML. It would be
nice if you could just replace the tag with its expansion and just add a
'REQUIRED' attribute, but I don't think HTML has such an attribute for
INPUT elements.

What this means is you would have to look also at the
<MM-Subscribe-Button> tag which expands to <INPUT type="Submit"
name="email-button" value="Subscribe"> and add some ONCLICK= javascript
to enforce an entry for fullname.

But, there are multiple problems with this. The first issue is that due
to XSS protection, you can't put things like ONCLICK in HTML templates
edited via the web admin interface. You would have to have access to the
Mailman server and create an edited template as discussed in the FAQ at
<http://wiki.list.org/x/jYA9>. Another way to do it would be to just
remove the subscribe form and replace it with a link to your own
subscribe page (see <http://wiki.list.org/x/hIA9>).

Beyond that, even if you made a bomb proof page that would refuse to
allow subscription without a real name, it wouldn't prevent a user from
subscribing by email without a real name.

You could (if you have access) modify the Mailman code to require a real
name for subscription, but even this could be effectively bypassed by a
user providing a bogus name. Perhaps a better approach is to set your
list's Privacy options... -> Subscription rules -> subscribe_policy to
"Require approval" and just not approve any requests that don't provide
an acceptable real name.

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