On 12/16/07, Cyndi Norwitz wrote:
> When I did a search for a general Mailman support discussion list, I found
> this one. If I am wrong about this list's purpose, please tell me! Is
> this list mainly for announcing version updates, reporting bugs, and asking
> for new features? If so, I'd still stay, because those things interest me.
> But if there is a better list for the general user "how do I do X?" or
> "help me troubleshoot Y" questions, let me know and I'll go join it.
In addition to my duties in helping to keep the whole mail system for
python.org up and running, I am also one of the co-owners/moderators
of this mailing list, and I am currently the only active
co-owner/moderator for this list. No one has explicitly laid out all
the rules for me as co-owner/moderator, but we have accumulated some
standard practices over time.
One standard practice is that the core developers should be protected
from having to answer or participate in any discussions where their
time could be better spent elsewhere. Of course, the core developers
are more than welcome to participate in any discussions that they
like. We just try to keep as much stuff off their backs as we can.
Mark is one such core developer. He's also one of the most prolific
posters on this mailing list, in part because there are so many
questions that get asked that I am not able to answer, and so they
have to fall to someone who knows the code better than I do. But I
still try to protect him as much as I can.
Many other questions would have been answered by people who had read
the appropriate FAQ entries or the archives of the list, although I
must confess that sometimes people don't know what terms to use when
searching the FAQ or the archives.
As one of the co-owners/moderators of this list, I would say that
you're welcome to ask whatever questions on this list that you may
have regarding the installation, operations, and maintenance of
Mailman, so long as you can be reasonably sure of a few things:
1. The problem you're having is not unique to your particular
customized non-standard installation.
2. The problem you're having is not addressed in the documentation.
3. The problem you're having is not addressed in the FAQ.
4. The problem you're having is not discussed in the archives.
Note that #1 applies to OS, distribution, or other specific versions
of Mailman that have been put together by other parties, including
Apple, Debian, Red Hat, cPanel, Plesk, etc....
If you downloaded and installed Mailman yourself from the source
tarballs that we provide through the links listed at
<http://www.list.org/download.html>, then you don't have to worry
about #1. If you installed Mailman yourself from a binary package,
then by definition that did not come from one of our official
sources, and you may have to worry about #1. If you installed a
product from some commercial company that incorporates something they
call "Mailman", then you almost certainly do have to worry about #1.
If you are a user of a service provided by someone else, and the
service they provide is called "Mailman", then you may or may not
need to worry about #1, depending on how that service provider
installed their software. Until you can be reasonably certain as to
what types of problems fall into which categories, you should first
ask your service provider for support on the services they have
installed and make available to you.
Keep in mind that even if your service provider does have a
completely bog-standard installation of Mailman, there's lots of site
or list administrative tasks that you may want/need to do that may
require direct privileged access to the Mailman installation, and
therefore your service provider would almost certainly have to do any
of those tasks for you.
From what I've been able to gather, your ISP has made at least some
customizations of their Mailman installation. Unfortunately, as a
user, it can be difficult for you to tell what problems you are
seeing that are a result from their customized installation, and what
are a result of standard features within Mailman.
--
Brad Knowles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Member of the Python.org Postmaster Team
Co-moderator of mailman-users and mailman-developers mailing lists
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