Let me say that i don't manage or host any lists. I am, however, a member of several lists. As a member of mailing lists i have a suggestion for a feature that would, i think, be of benefit to list members an non-members.
As a member of several developer/support lists I often see postings from people who have a single question. They don't wish to subscribe to the list, they just want an answer to their question or to be able answer questions that list members may have in response to their suggestion. My sending this idea to the mailman list would would qualify. Their choices are few and problematic. o They can subscribe and then cancel the subscription at a later date -- a hurdle that daunts many and presents the prospect of inundation. o Some poll a list archive -- that causes delays, heavier load on the archive server and follow-ups that break threading. o Some ask list members to CC them in follow-ups -- sporadic compliance at best resulting in their address being dropped from the thread and the user either missing some of the replies or polling the archives. All of these choices reduce effective participation and thereby contribution of those on the perepheri. I have thought of another possibility. I call it non-member thread subscription. When a posting to a list is made by a non-member a record associating that non-member's email address with the thread is created. When follow-up postings are made to the thread they also get sent to the thread subscribers. This way the non-member could communicate with the developer community about their single issue in a fairly transparent manner. This whole process could be done with a supplementary program provided it had access to the subscriber list. This external program would track threads with non-member posters and forward the follups to them. As indicated i am not a member of this list. I put this out there as a suggestion. What you do with it is up to you. In this case i'll not be monitoring the list so if you have a question you want ME to answer regarding my suggestion you will have to CC me. -- ________________________________________________________________ J.W. Schultz Pegasystems Technologies email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Remember Cernan and Schmitt ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ This message was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe or change your options at http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org