searchable list archives?

[Chuck Swiger]

On Jul 12, 2007, at 11:27 AM, Luis Villa wrote:
> Two things jump out offhand:
> * I know mailman isn't a huge usability improvement over ezmlm, but it
> is a big enough improvement that I'd strongly suggest using it.

I would certainly second this recommendation.

We'd discussed this before in part because there was a period where  
list subscription requests were being forged and causing posters to  
receive strange bounces from Amazon.com or elsewhere (around Jan 24,  
2007).  And, of course, Mailman has good list archive handling which  
improves searching & so forth....

> * site searches of opensource.org should return results from the
> mailing lists; that probably means moving them off crynwyr and onto
> opensource.org.

Agreed.  That's really up to Russ Nelson, though....

-- 
-Chuck

Begin forwarded message:
> From: Chuck Swiger <chuck at codefab.com>
> Date: January 24, 2007 4:24:16 PM PST
> To: <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>
> Cc: "'License Discuss'" <license-discuss at opensource.org>
> Subject: [META] Mailing list issues, was: delite me from your  
> mailing list
>
> On Jan 24, 2007, at 3:32 PM, Lawrence Rosen wrote:
>> This whole experience concerns me on multiple levels. Why should  
>> we allow
>> people (other than me and my friends, of course) ever to post  
>> repeated spam
>> messages through some automatic script that they negligently invoke?
>
> Are you volunteering your time to moderate postings to this list?   
> Switching to a moderated list would result in near-perfect removal  
> of spam and excessive unsubscribe requests being posted to all  
> members....
>
>> And why should it be so easy for malicious people (Matthew  
>> Flaschen explicitly
>> excepted) to unsubscribe third parties from this list?
>
> It's not.
>
> When a mailing list program receives an unsubscribe request, it  
> sends an email containing a "magic cookie" in the message in the  
> Subject header, email body, and/or as part of an URL to the  
> subscribed email address.  Only if the recipient replies to the  
> message preserving the cookie, or clicks on the unsubscribe link,  
> does that person actually become unsubscribed.
>
>> Can't someone find a more sophisticated subscription and posting  
>> mechanism than this email list?
>
> EZMLM is mildly dated in terms of mailing list functionality,  
> although people who like qmail find it integrates well with EZMLM.
>
> I am of the opinion that Mailman, www.list.org, would be a  
> significantly better solution as it by default ensures that an  
> unsubscribe link appears in the footer of all list messages, has  
> somewhat more secure handling of subscribe and unsubscribe cookies  
> (I don't believe it is as vulnerable to forged subscription  
> requests as EZMLM is), and it is smart enough to identify admin  
> traffic like people sending an unsubscribe request to the list  
> itself and hold it for moderator/list-admin action, rather than  
> just blindly spamming everybody on the list with noise.
>
> Mailman also supports an option for enabling temporary list  
> moderation, so that a list which is under attack from spam,  
> flamewars, or subscribe/unsubscribe issues can be filtered and  
> moderated until things settle down, and then revert to unmoderated  
> behavior once things quiet down.
>
> Of course, this is up to Russ Nelson as <postmaster at opensource.org>...
>
> -- 
> -Chuck