Smartlist July 2000

smartlist@lists.rwth-aachen.de

13 participants
12 discussions

Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?

by Charlie Summers

At 11:41 AM -0400 7/28/00, Werner Reisberger is rumored to have typed: > I never saw any > admin reply to the numerous complains about spam messages. Actually, that's not _strictly_ true, since I remember when Stephen was actually maintaining the list (and probably anally have archives of the list from that time somewhere on some floppy or MO cart from a long time ago and far far away). But you're right, it's been _years_ since he's been around. However, the list belongs to the maintainer (or at least the machine's admin), not the members. You'll get no argument from me that the list should be moved (I believe I said exactly that a couple of times), but to suggest the admins need to take a poll to ask what they may or may not do with the existing list is silly, to say the least. They are certainly able to move this list to mailman without the list subscriber's permission - indeed, they _have_ done so, which makes my point for me. Whether we should move this list to a SmartList server is a completely seperate issue...one which Philip should probably weigh in on, since he is now maintaining the procmail/SmartList source and as such the de facto head of our band of merry wanderers... Charlie

6 years, 1 month

Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?

by Werner Reisberger

On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 12:23:13PM -0400, Charlie Summers wrote: > > I never saw any > > admin reply to the numerous complains about spam messages. > > Actually, that's not _strictly_ true, since I remember when Stephen was > actually maintaining the list (and probably anally have archives of the list > from that time somewhere on some floppy or MO cart from a long time ago and > far far away). But you're right, it's been _years_ since he's been around. If someone doesn't care for 3 years for a list, although numerous complains has been sent, than there wasn't a maintainer. I am also not sure if Stephen really was the maintainer. I also think that the maintainer has to decide in the end what happens with a list but I cannot understand people who are doing nothing for a list, permitting postings of spam for years and suddenly deciding nonsense without asking anybody. > However, the list belongs to the maintainer (or at least the machine's > admin), not the members. You'll get no argument from me that the list should > be moved (I believe I said exactly that a couple of times), but to suggest > the admins need to take a poll to ask what they may or may not do with the > existing list is silly, to say the least. They are certainly able to move > this list to mailman without the list subscriber's permission - indeed, they > _have_ done so, which makes my point for me. Your argumentation would be sensible if there would have been any maintainer. As I said before, there wasn't any maintainer since years. Therefore it would be at least polite if the new maintainer would ask the list what could be done. This list is nothing without the voluntary contributions of many list admins. I cannot say whether the move to mailman was unavoidable, because I don't read the procmail list and today I read first about this move. For me this move is only one more example for the complete ignorance with which SL subscribers have been treated. I think there hasn't changed anything in this respect because the move to mailman has been done by the university of Aachen for technical reasons. I am pretty sure that no one of SL's ghost maintainer(s) was involved. Therefore we are still in the same situation. There isn't a SL maintainer available. Now there is at least one Mailman maintainer available who stopped the spam - thanks God! If we want the SL list running on SL we should at first know who is the responsible (living) person for such questions or who should it be. Werner

24 years, 1 month

Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?

by David R. Linn

>> Quoting "David R. Linn" <drl(a)vuse.vanderbilt.edu>: >> >> > Yes, paritcularly when all that was needed was a trivial change to >> > the list config. >> >> Since YEARS list members complained about this, sending emails to >> Stephen and the list without any reaction of a responsible person. Unfortunately, SRB has been otherwise occupied for a while and a plan to turn the procmail and SmartList machines over to a team never got off the ground. (I was a member of that team) For that matter, neither did a plan to move the lists to procmail.org and smartlist.org. >> Now suddenly someone made a decision without asking the list members. >> >> This list owns the list members not someone at an university who wants >> to be a big list master! My perception is that the change was a result of the sudden decommisioning of the machine on which the list was running. (I have faced such a need in the past; when a machine is compromised, it needs to be off the net **NOW**.) So, the choice is not so much between SmartList and Mailman as it is between Mailman and *nothingness*, i.e. the list would have been abruptly discontinued. >> Such an behaviour is disappointing and doesn't encourage anybody >> continuing to support SmartList/Procmail. Personally, I thanked the RWTH staff for making the extra effort to keep the list alive when they could have let it die silently. >> If the SmartList-Package-Maintainer agree to point to another list >> server for SmartList we could simply set up one very quickly (with >> searchable (web) archive ....) running with SL. I personally believe we need to revive the plan to move the lists to procmail.org and smartlist.org. >> I don't like to remember a password to unsubscribe and I don't like such >> a "list dictatorship"! At least we still have a list on which to discuss this. >> Werner David -- David R. Linn, SEDCON System Manager |INET: drl(a)vuse.vanderbilt.edu Vanderbilt University School of Engineering|Phone: [+1] 615-343-6164 Box 1826, Station B |Disclaimer: I have no authority Nashville, TN, USA 37235 |to speak for anyone but myself. The 2nd millenium and 20th century do not end before December 31, 2000. http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~drl

24 years, 1 month

Whoops. (Was: RE: Smartlist web interface...)

by Charlie Summers

At 2:09 PM -0400 7/29/00, Charlie Summers is rumored to have typed: > Satisfied now? (*sigh*) There is a vast difference between healthy scarcasm and just being snide - I pride myself on being a curmudgeon, but usually manage to sound like more than just a bitter old guy. Although I _do_ stand by the ideas in the last letter, I apologize for being a pain in the...er...neck in my tone. No excuse for it - I can't even blame Microsoft. Charlie

24 years, 1 month

RE: Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic t hat smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?)

by Munday, Merrick

> From: Charlie Summers [mailto:charlie@lofcom.com] > Sent: Friday, July 28, 2000 6:43 PM > >At 4:39 PM -0400 7/28/00, Munday, Merrick is rumored to have typed: >> Actually no. Depending on the configuration, MS Outlook will wrap longer >> X-Command lines, whereupon Smartlist will not process them properly. > > (*sigh*) Well, gee, if you tell your email client to wrap lines, and it >does, why sound surprised. Simply change the settings to keep OE from >wrapping. (I assume that's possible; although I don't use OE myself, >certainly every other mail client I've ever used on unix, Win, or Mac allows >to switch wrap on and off.) I assume that by OE you mean Outlook Express. I was precise in my statement -- I meant Outlook, not Outlook Express. Both Outlook Express and Outlook (when installed in the Internet Mail Only configuration) do provide a rudimentary option to control line wrapping. One can set a "wrap lines at X" parameter -- but X must be specified as 132 or less, so even in these configurations one cannot turn wrapping "off". However, when using Outlook through an Exchange Server (the so-called Corporate/Workgroup installation), there is _no_ option to control line wrapping. >> Now you may feel that using broken MS mail clients is foolish, but ... > > But that's _not_ "broken" behavior; if you set a client to wrap, and it >does, that sounds like correct behavior. As I mentioned above, there is no wrap setting. To me, that's broken. > (Note the pattern here...I actually expect people to _think,_ where >everyone else seems to accept user error [or user stupidity] as an excuse to >write complex work-arounds.) Charlie, you are obviously on the Guru level with SmartList and Procmail, and I respect your expertise in these areas. I am not a SmartList/Procmail guru, and that's why my participation on this list is limited -- I refrain from talking about things I have little knowledge of. However, I do know the MS stuff pretty well. In this case I think you need to back up a little, be a little less harsh when you're not in an area that lies within your expertise. --Merrick

24 years, 1 month

Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?

by David R. Linn

Yes, paritcularly when all that was needed was a trivial change to the list config. I see this as a sign of the times. The 3rd gen list managers, developed before the rise of the WWW, are slowly being displaced by the 4th gen list managers that provide integrated WWW interfaces to list managment for the list manager, list supscription management to the user, and WWW-accessible archives for everyone. Both SmartList and Majordomo have add-ons that provide this but the 4G list managers have them as a part of the core.

24 years, 1 month

RE: Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic t hat smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?)

by Munday, Merrick

> From: Charlie Summers [mailto:charlie@lofcom.com] > Sent: Friday, July 28, 2000 4:12 PM > Am I the _only_ person who read the .example files, and so > know that the > X-Command line may be placed in the body if one incorporates > the recipe in > .examples/rc.local.r00? This eliminates _all_ discussion > about mail clients, > since it will work perfectly with _any_ client. Actually no. Depending on the configuration, MS Outlook will wrap longer X-Command lines, whereupon Smartlist will not process them properly. One will recieve diagnostic headers such as: "X-Diagnostic: Suspicious X-Command Format". We've been forced to use other mail clients to send X-Commands. Now you may feel that using broken MS mail clients is foolish, but ... that's what's on the machines of the people that need to do the list maintenance, so ... --Merrick Munday

24 years, 1 month

Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?

by Werner Reisberger

On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 12:39:36PM -0400, Mitchell Darer wrote: > "easily searchable mailing list..." > > so is MailMan that list? No. Easily searchable list means a full text search capability which is easy to use. There isn't such a thing on the new site. Werner

24 years, 1 month

Re: Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?)

by Roger Burton West

[Dan sent me this in error. - Roger] ----- Forwarded message from Dan Kappus <dk(a)squaretrade.com> ----- Date: Fri, 28 Jul 2000 09:35:41 -0700 From: Dan Kappus <dk(a)squaretrade.com> To: Roger Burton West <roger(a)firedrake.org> Subject: Re: Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?) On Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 05:25:21PM +0100, Roger Burton West wrote: > On or about Fri, Jul 28, 2000 at 09:17:49AM -0700, Rob Flickenger typed: > > >I'm certainly willing to bear with SmartList's 'homely' appearance. It's > >extensible, stable, and very fast... And eventually, when the community > >finds the time to put a pretty face on it, it will truly kick ass, and > >we'll all be ahead of the learning curve... =) > > OK. What does a web interface for smartlist need? > > Considering the "list administration" side first: > > The most basic version would simply send appropriately-formatted > X-Command: mail to the list-server. That's fairly trivial to > get right. But I'm considering the possibilities inherent in > a slightly larger CGI, which might be run suid to the list user, > which could maniupulate the list data files directly - to check > authentication, add/remove users, and so on. keep a database of all the users that are subscribed to all the lists hosted by a particular instance of smartlist, and let users, with insecure passwords which are mailed to them at a rate specified by the admin, change their subscribtion info and settings. actually, list administration is the braindead side of it. many list admins can do list admin stuff, but their users are unable to subscribe and unsubscribe. > > As for the user side, how would you prevent malicious foreign > unsubscriptions without a password? The existing "confirm" patch > from aks would be helpful, here. just ask for a confirm in an email message. > > Do we want a mhonarc-like archiving system, given that mhonarc is > pretty easy to integrate with smartlist already? mhonarc is good, especially given that the mailman developpers are often thinking about ditching pipermail in favor of it! for some reasons that web archives are important, see the o'reilly book "practical intranet groupware" -- dan kappus, system admin squaretrade, www.squaretrade.com p.s. I do both mailman and smartlist here ----- End forwarded message -----

24 years, 1 month

Re:Smartlist web interface (was Re: does anyone find it ironic that smartlist mailing list is using Mailman?)

by David R. Linn

>> From: Charlie Summers <charlie(a)lofcom.com> >> I honestly don't understand it. Can _anyone_ explain why using a web >> server to control a mailing list as simple to maintain as SmartList is a >> "good thing?" "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Answer #1: Most of the world works with MUAs that make adding headers (i.e. lines to the header of messages) needlessly difficult. Answer #2: Most of the world has a WWW browser that they have come to use for every sort of task, even when the task is more easily accomplished via a simple command. Why? Because they don't have to remember what tasks can be accomplished or how to do those tasks; they simply choose from the options presented and the CGI script walks them through the process. This is the CLI/GUI argument in a nutshell: one provides a simple (?) method to do (precisely ?) what you want if you can remember how to do it; the other provides a method of doing (approxminately) what you want without your having to remember much more than how to get to the starting point.

24 years, 1 month

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Smartlist July 2000