At 8:04 AM -0800 2/8/99, SRE wrote:
> The second problem is the most vexing: If I have 22 lists, does a
> user subscribe to each list separately but then send to master lists,
> or does the user subscribe to "one of N" master lists (all combos
> of 22 lists would have to be sitting around just in case)? Either way,
> people will not be able to send to the list they subscribed to unless
> there is some piece of software looking for dups and creating posts on
> the other list(s).
Welcome to the basic limitation of the mailing list -- granularity.
In a perfect world, there'd be one mailing list "The Mail List", and
the stuff you're interested in would magically be filtered out of
that data stream for your attention, and the stuff you're not
interested in would magically disappear. The Shockwave Rider (again I
highly recommend this) uses this concept, and it's 20+ years old.
Unfortunately, that implies really smart client tools and huge
bandwidths. And we're not there.
I've done some work on meta-lists and sub-lists. You can't do it by
subscribing a list to another list, because it just doesn't work
cleanly. It has to be done at the MTA level (sendmail alias level...)
so that duplicate subscriptions get resolved cleanly. But that
creates an issue of user-confusion as to which list they're
subscribed to, unless you're very careful about how you document and
describe things.
In some circumstances, it'll work. In most situations, if you really
need this kind of setup, you're better off looking in other
directions. or letting your users deal with it at the client level,
because right now, mail list software just aren't set up to do this
well.
I'm running a number of sub-listed lists (one list, many sublists, to
parallelize delivery and keep some of majordomo's flaws at bay), and
you're just asking for confusion.
--
Chuq Von Rospach (Hockey fan? <http://www.plaidworks.com/hockey/>)
Apple Mail List Gnome (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Plaidworks Consulting (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
<http://www.plaidworks.com/> + <http://www.lists.apple.com/>
Featuring Winslow Leach at the Piano!
