Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Mark Sapiro]

On 2/2/19 12:47 PM, William Bagwell wrote:
> 
> BTW do not see a "Keywords: header." but do see an X-Topics: FOO. With FOO: 
> also appearing in the Subject header. 


The X-Topics: FOO is because the post matched the FOO topic. A Keywords:
header if any is added by the poster with the intent that it will match
one or more topics.

I.e., A post will match the FOO topic if any of the FOO keywords/regexps
matches either the Subject: or Keywords: (if any) header or Subject: or
Keywords: psudo-headers at the beginning of the message body.

Perhaps one reason why Topics aren't more widely used is that prior to
Mailman 2.1.20 (31-Mar-2015), they didn't work as documented. This is
from the NEWS file for that release.

> - The processing of Topics regular expressions has changed. Previously the
>   Topics regexp was compiled in verbose mode but not documented as such
>   which caused some confusion.  Also, the documentation indicated that
>   topic keywords could be entered one per line, but these entries were not
>   handled properly.  Topics regexps are now compiled in non-verbose mode
>   and multi-line entries are 'ored'.  Existing Topics regexps will be
>   converted when the list is updated so they will continue to work.

-- 
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[William Bagwell]

On Saturday 02 February 2019, Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users wrote:
> I feel like Mailman's "Topic" feature is under utilized.  :-/

Agreed! Oddly none of the 'techie' lists I have ever been on enable this 
feature. Couple of critter lists that started on Listserve and moved to 
Mailman do. First learned of Mailman back in 2001 when one of then switched 
to 2.0.6. 

BTW do not see a "Keywords: header." but do see an X-Topics: FOO. With FOO: 
also appearing in the Subject header. 
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

R. Diez writes:

 > Your comments are surprisingly unfair for someone in a mailing list
 > for mailing list software.

How would you be a good judge of fairness?  Have you been developing
mailing list software for twenty years and reading the requests and
problems of users daily for that period?  We developers have a record
of considering what others have to say, and their requests, at least
somewhat fairly.  If we didn't, Mailman wouldn't be the most popular
open source discussion list solution.

Specifically with respect to the comments themselves, consider that in
many cases mailing lists deliberately direct replies to themselves,
making it fairly inconvenient to reply to author.  (I find it a little
bit shameful that Mailman explicitly supports that abuse of
"Reply-To", but the demand for it is indeed overwhelming.)  Most lists
I know of do have a "what starts on the list should stay on the list"
policy even if not enforced by Reply-To munging.  That indicates that
these communities desire a coherence that is harmed by the kind of
behavior you described if it becomes frequent.  I also have some
experience with how such features affect the communities that use them
(see below).

 > Let's take me as an example.

But that's the whole problem, you see.  In deciding how to improve
Mailman, we need to consider not only what some individual posters
want, but also communities, their dynamics, and how major changes like
this affect them.  We think about how mailing lists work, and
therefore what they can and cannot do well.  The service you want is
provided much better by existing forum software and by issue trackers.
There has been some ambition to fill that niche with Mailman features
(less now that Barry has retired), but web-based tech already exists
that does it well, and I don't see how both can be supported well at
the same time.

 > I asked about a way around a perceived limitation,

And I responded that it is not a limitation, it is a feature of the
kind of community that mailing lists support best.  *This* community
does support the mode you requested, you know, just not via Mailman.
There's a tracker at gitlab.com.  I would expect that these days most
communities that develop software do.

I've thought about implementing this in Mailman and came to the
conclusion that you can't have both.  No pushme-pullyou software does
both well because "push by mail" is basically asynchronous while "pull
by web" does support useful synchronicity.  Both groups of users get
frustrated because they don't get the experience they expect.

I've also seen this in practice in groups that move, or try to move,
from lists to forums (I don't know of examples of the reverse).
There's a general turnover of active posters, with much more
specialization in thread participation, and a departure of experts who
are overwhelmed by repeated questions and proposals and are
disappointed in the decreased information density.

In some cases that may be a desirable effect (even for the
"disappointed experts", who waste less time).  But our mission is to
support the kind of community those experts (and many other users)
apparently want.

 > But am I spamming?

I don't know in general, because it depends on the community and I
don't know where you've posted.  In many of the mailing lists I
participate in the answer would be yes, if you posted to them in that
mode.

Here, inasmuch as what you want is technically beyond what Mailman can
currently support, there's no problem with posting the question as
long as you accept the answer "no, Mailman can't do that and no, there
are no plans to support it soon," and don't ask for a personal reply.
That is useful to us as we can gauge the amount of support for the
request from other users.  (Zero, so far.)

 > Is this discussion not welcome here then?

You got multiple responses, obviously discussion is welcome.  But I
see no enthusiasm for your proposal from other users.  Continuing
discussion here doesn't seem profitable.

If you want to become a developer and contribute some of the effort
required to provide the features in Mailman 3, subscribe to
mailman-develop...@python.org and clone the HyperKitty repository from
gitlab.com/mailman/hyperkitty.  It has some of what you want, but
currently it's the tail of the dog.  To support the features you want
it really would need to wag the dog, which is quite possible.

Or you can just subscribe to mailman-developers and advocate for what
you want.  But given the current lack of manpower and the many more
important tasks that need to be done, it will quickly become tiresome
if you don't contribute substantial effort yourself.

 > Maybe you are implying

No, you're taking insult where none is intended.

 > Other projects have benefited from a bug report or a small patch I
 > sent to their mailing lists. I was never actually subscribed to any
 > of those.

Since those are for the benefit of those projects, they're not
spamming by my definition, though in 

Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Richard Damon]

On 2/2/19 1:37 PM, Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users wrote:
> On 2/1/19 6:49 PM, Richard Damon wrote:
>> Yes, Mailman has a feature call topics, but that is very different
>> then what the OP is asking for.
>
> Agreed.  (I thought I covered that in my last email.  Maybe I wasn't
> clear.)
>
>> The Mailman 'Topic' operation basically provides the ability of the
>> list owner to define topics based on Regex's on the subject (which is
>> helped greatly if posters add the appropriate key words to subjects
>> to allow them to be categorized).
>
> I'm glad to know that Mailman's "Topic" feature (key word matching)
> works on the subject.  I thought it was looking explicitly for the
> Keywords: header.  That does help some.
>
> Of course, that does rely on posters putting proper keywords in the
> subject.  Which is less than reliable.
Yes, I have found it not very useful for a general population list. It
might work better on a technically focused list, or maybe if implemented
at the very beginning of a lists history, and a large percentage of the
readers use it, so forgetting to use the right keywords causes a
significant drop in visibility.
>
> I have long wished that Mailman's "Topic" feature would also look for
> keywords in the body in addition to the Subject and Keywords: header.
>
> I feel like Mailman's "Topic" feature is under utilized.  :-/
>
>> I suppose one option that might satisfy the OP would be the ability
>> for the subscriber to add a custom regex as a filter. That way they
>> could get it to filter on the replies they are looking for, and
>> ignore the rest. The biggest issue is that regex's are somewhat
>> archaic for the typical user, but it would only really affect people
>> who try to use it.
>
> Oy vey.  I would be afraid of how that would likely not scale.  I also
> see security implications in that.  (Running subscriber specified
> RegEx (code) on a server.)  I also feel like that would be mainly
> usable for the single user that specified the RE.  Or are you
> proposing that the user specified RE show up as available "Topics"
> that people can choose to subscribe to?
My suggestion would be to allow the subscriber to specify a RE just for
them, not that it be made available to others. Having an arbitrary user
be able to add something to a screen that other users see would be a
serious risk. Letting a user run a custom RE to determine if mail would
be sent to them shouldn't be a risk, as long as there is no exploitable
bug in the RE code that could be exploited with a crafted RE. I suppose
you might need to be a bit careful about possible Denial-of-Service
attacks with an overly complicated RE
>
> I feel like this would be best implemented if the poster added a blob
> of text to their subject and configured their client side MUA filters
> to mark messages from the mailing list that don't have said blob in
> the subject as read.
>
Not sure I would like posters adding unique custom 'blobs' to subjects
to mark them as their topics, that REALLY doesn't scale. Just
programming their MUA to filter out message that don't match the
significant core of the base subject would be sufficient, though that
does say the 'get' all the emails, they just don't need to read them.


-- 
Richard Damon

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users]

On 2/1/19 6:49 PM, Richard Damon wrote:
Yes, Mailman has a feature call topics, but that is very different 
then what the OP is asking for.


Agreed.  (I thought I covered that in my last email.  Maybe I wasn't clear.)

The Mailman 'Topic' operation basically provides the ability of the 
list owner to define topics based on Regex's on the subject (which is 
helped greatly if posters add the appropriate key words to subjects to 
allow them to be categorized).


I'm glad to know that Mailman's "Topic" feature (key word matching) 
works on the subject.  I thought it was looking explicitly for the 
Keywords: header.  That does help some.


Of course, that does rely on posters putting proper keywords in the 
subject.  Which is less than reliable.


I have long wished that Mailman's "Topic" feature would also look for 
keywords in the body in addition to the Subject and Keywords: header.


I feel like Mailman's "Topic" feature is under utilized.  :-/

I suppose one option that might satisfy the OP would be the ability for 
the subscriber to add a custom regex as a filter. That way they could 
get it to filter on the replies they are looking for, and ignore the 
rest. The biggest issue is that regex's are somewhat archaic for the 
typical user, but it would only really affect people who try to use it.


Oy vey.  I would be afraid of how that would likely not scale.  I also 
see security implications in that.  (Running subscriber specified RegEx 
(code) on a server.)  I also feel like that would be mainly usable for 
the single user that specified the RE.  Or are you proposing that the 
user specified RE show up as available "Topics" that people can choose 
to subscribe to?


I feel like this would be best implemented if the poster added a blob of 
text to their subject and configured their client side MUA filters to 
mark messages from the mailing list that don't have said blob in the 
subject as read.




--
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Richard Damon]

On 2/1/19 4:44 PM, Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users wrote:
> On 02/01/2019 01:14 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
>> Of course there is the concept of 'Topic' in a mailing list. Mailman,
>> the web interface, or whatever, does know how to group topics
>> together. That is an obvious feature, because people tend to
>> work/participate in threads.
>
> I believe that what Mailman (2) considers to be a "topic" is
> considerably different than what you might consider to be a "topic" or
> "subject" or "thread".
>
> My understanding is that Mailman considers a message to be part of a
> "topic" if the message has one or more key words defined for the
> topic. I.e. any message that has SMTP could be one topic, or DNS be
> another, or Python a third.  This is decidedly NOT the "subject" or
> "thread" meaning of the word "topic" that I think you are using.
>
> What makes this more interesting ~> problematic is that I think
> Mailman doesn't actually scan the message body for the topic(s) /
> keyword(s). Instead, I believe it requires the topic(s) / keyword(s)
> to be listed in the Keywords: header.  -  I know that I've used
> procmail to scan (copies of) messages and add the proper topic(s) /
> keyword(s) to the Keywords: header so that Mailman would see them and
> use it's topic filter properly.  -  This was a LONG time ago and I
> have forgotten almost all of the context.  This may no longer be a
> requirement for current versions of Mailman.
>
> Suffice it to say that Mailman's "Topic" concept is different than
> concept that you and I have for "topic" / "subject" / "thread".
Yes, Mailman has a feature call topics, but that is very different then
what the OP is asking for. The Mailman 'Topic' operation basically
provides the ability of the list owner to define topics based on Regex's
on the subject (which is helped greatly if posters add the appropriate
key words to subjects to allow them to be categorized). I suppose one
option that might satisfy the OP would be the ability for the subscriber
to add a custom regex as a filter. That way they could get it to filter
on the replies they are looking for, and ignore the rest. The biggest
issue is that regex's are somewhat archaic for the typical user, but it
would only really affect people who try to use it.

-- 
Richard Damon

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Grant Taylor via Mailman-Users]

On 02/01/2019 01:14 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
Of course there is the concept of 'Topic' in a mailing list. Mailman, 
the web interface, or whatever, does know how to group topics together. 
That is an obvious feature, because people tend to work/participate in 
threads.


I believe that what Mailman (2) considers to be a "topic" is 
considerably different than what you might consider to be a "topic" or 
"subject" or "thread".


My understanding is that Mailman considers a message to be part of a 
"topic" if the message has one or more key words defined for the topic. 
I.e. any message that has SMTP could be one topic, or DNS be another, or 
Python a third.  This is decidedly NOT the "subject" or "thread" meaning 
of the word "topic" that I think you are using.


What makes this more interesting ~> problematic is that I think Mailman 
doesn't actually scan the message body for the topic(s) / keyword(s). 
Instead, I believe it requires the topic(s) / keyword(s) to be listed in 
the Keywords: header.  -  I know that I've used procmail to scan (copies 
of) messages and add the proper topic(s) / keyword(s) to the Keywords: 
header so that Mailman would see them and use it's topic filter 
properly.  -  This was a LONG time ago and I have forgotten almost all 
of the context.  This may no longer be a requirement for current 
versions of Mailman.


Suffice it to say that Mailman's "Topic" concept is different than 
concept that you and I have for "topic" / "subject" / "thread".




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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Mark Sapiro]

On 2/1/19 5:36 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
> 
>> [...]
>> 'Mostly work' is often a problem. Computers need precise procedures, and
>> people tend to expect that they do things right.
> 
> No need to be so strict.


Easy to say if you're not the one who has to deal with the bug reports.

-- 
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San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Carl Zwanzig]

To analogize the entire thread-

Mailman is a high quality precision-ground Phillips screwdriver, but it does 
not work on square-drive (Robertson) screws nor open paint cans. The OP is 
asking that it be modified so that it does; the developers and other users 
are discussing why this is not a good idea.


BTW, I'm not aware of any mailing list managers that will automatically add 
a subscriber based on a single message to the list, if nothing else, there 
should always be an opt-in confirmation (prevents false additions and 
backscatter from forged messages).


later,

z!
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[vince]

I've been using Mailman on Debian for over a decade on dozens of projects. 
I've never contributed any code.  I've never said a word.  I just want to 
thank the team for spending thousands of hours creating a free program that 
does such an impressive job.Thank you!~Vince



Vincent F. Heuser, Jr.
Hirsh and Heuser Attorneys
3600 Goldsmith Lane
Louisville,  KY 40220
(502) 458-5879
http://www.hirshandheuser.com
vheu...@hirshandheuser.com



- Original Message - 
From: "R. Diez via Mailman-Users" 

To: "Richard Damon" 
Cc: 
Sent: Friday, February 01, 2019 08:36 AM
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject





Perhaps I'm being a bit over dramatic, but it does, in my mind, describe
what you seem to be doing, You come in and say that the list software
isn't working the way you would prefer, but for this conversation,
everyone else needs to change how they use the list so you can

> [...]

You are being a bit over dramatic indeed. I don't pretend that everyone 
else should change their ways. And I do look into the archives all the 
time. That is what I am trying to optimise away. I just wish Mailman (or 
whatever associated component) would help here, like other communication 
platforms already do.


Like I said, I cannot subscribe to every list I need to ask a question or 
drop a bug report into. I just have not got enough time. I only go through 
the mailing list hoops if something is really serious, or if something 
really bugs me. Unsurprisingly, bureaucracy barriers do have a negative 
effect on communication after all.


And I do care. I am trying to understand what the problem is. I am trying 
to convince you guys, because you write mailing list software. This 
communication activity also counts as "work". If I find the time, I will 
write it all up in my Wiki, so other people have a quick overview of what 
the problem is. I am not the only one annoyed by this.




The expectation for a mailing list, is that someone with a question will
come and hopefully first browse through the archives (perhaps with a

> [...]

I have done that. Why do you assume or imply that I had not? I just didn't 
find anything applicable.




To just barge in and do it 'their own way' is just being impolite.

> [...]

Would you rather I didn't post then? But like I said, I do look at the 
archives later on. This is how I realised that you do have a message at 
the top dated "April 2024". By the way, that is a bit embarrassing for a 
mailing list for mailing list software. But manually looking at the 
archives is just unnecessarily time consuming for me.


As far as your mailing list is concerned, you can certainly say that users 
should accommodate to the way you operate your mailing list. You can start 
by stating your usage policy here, next to "Mailman Users":


http://list.org/contact.html

But I still think it is a strange way to treat your users. You know, the 
people you write the software for. My claim is, that drives many people 
away. What you consider "unpolite" often comes across as "unforgiving", 
"unhelpful" or "out of touch with reality" on the other side. After all, 
you are trying to load unnecessary burden on the shoulders of those users 
willing to communicate.


Not subscribing is in fact a quite common behaviour. For example, look for 
"not subscribed" here:


https://sourceforge.net/p/smartmontools/mailman/smartmontools-support/thread/9e4d58a79814d365ac99c8181eeb3...@coraid.com/

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/04/msg00012.html


> [...]

'Mostly work' is often a problem. Computers need precise procedures, and
people tend to expect that they do things right.


No need to be so strict. We face communication problems everyday. Mobile 
phones fail. Letters get lost. Misunderstandings. Wrong addressee. Server 
down. The lot. But things are still improving. Surely Mailman and the like 
can do better!




It's a bit like asking why the city bus can't come right when I need it,


Surely the smartphone app that tells you when the bus comes (or maybe 
Google Maps) does not get it 100 % right either. But would you rather go 
back to reading paper timetables from the official source?


Regards,
  rdiez
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[R. Diez via Mailman-Users]

Perhaps I'm being a bit over dramatic, but it does, in my mind, describe
what you seem to be doing, You come in and say that the list software
isn't working the way you would prefer, but for this conversation,
everyone else needs to change how they use the list so you can

> [...]

You are being a bit over dramatic indeed. I don't pretend that everyone else should change their ways. And I do look into the archives all 
the time. That is what I am trying to optimise away. I just wish Mailman (or whatever associated component) would help here, like other 
communication platforms already do.


Like I said, I cannot subscribe to every list I need to ask a question or drop a bug report into. I just have not got enough time. I only go 
through the mailing list hoops if something is really serious, or if something really bugs me. Unsurprisingly, bureaucracy barriers do have 
a negative effect on communication after all.


And I do care. I am trying to understand what the problem is. I am trying to convince you guys, because you write mailing list software. 
This communication activity also counts as "work". If I find the time, I will write it all up in my Wiki, so other people have a quick 
overview of what the problem is. I am not the only one annoyed by this.




The expectation for a mailing list, is that someone with a question will
come and hopefully first browse through the archives (perhaps with a

> [...]

I have done that. Why do you assume or imply that I had not? I just didn't find 
anything applicable.



To just barge in and do it 'their own way' is just being impolite.

> [...]

Would you rather I didn't post then? But like I said, I do look at the archives later on. This is how I realised that you do have a message 
at the top dated "April 2024". By the way, that is a bit embarrassing for a mailing list for mailing list software. But manually looking at 
the archives is just unnecessarily time consuming for me.


As far as your mailing list is concerned, you can certainly say that users should accommodate to the way you operate your mailing list. You 
can start by stating your usage policy here, next to "Mailman Users":


http://list.org/contact.html

But I still think it is a strange way to treat your users. You know, the people you write the software for. My claim is, that drives many 
people away. What you consider "unpolite" often comes across as "unforgiving", "unhelpful" or "out of touch with reality" on the other side. 
After all, you are trying to load unnecessary burden on the shoulders of those users willing to communicate.


Not subscribing is in fact a quite common behaviour. For example, look for "not 
subscribed" here:

https://sourceforge.net/p/smartmontools/mailman/smartmontools-support/thread/9e4d58a79814d365ac99c8181eeb3...@coraid.com/

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/04/msg00012.html


> [...]

'Mostly work' is often a problem. Computers need precise procedures, and
people tend to expect that they do things right.


No need to be so strict. We face communication problems everyday. Mobile phones fail. Letters get lost. Misunderstandings. Wrong addressee. 
Server down. The lot. But things are still improving. Surely Mailman and the like can do better!




It's a bit like asking why the city bus can't come right when I need it,


Surely the smartphone app that tells you when the bus comes (or maybe Google Maps) does not get it 100 % right either. But would you rather 
go back to reading paper timetables from the official source?


Regards,
  rdiez
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Richard Damon]

On 2/1/19 3:14 AM, R. Diez wrote:
>
> > [...]
>> I will ask you how much you are willing to talk to a person who
>> basically interrupts, says they aren't really interested in the general
>> conversation, so isn't really listening, but if you go out of your way
>> to answer in a special way they will hear you. (Which is one way to
>> describe what you are doing),
>
> I do not understand why you are misrepresenting my actions. This is
> the second time in this list, but I have noticed this pattern elsewhere.
>
> I am not interrupting anything. That is a silly thing to say in this
> context. A mailing list is not a conversation that can get
> interrupted. A mailing list revolves around "topics". That is why
> people sometimes ask to start a new thread if the subject changes.
> That is how you skip the things you are not interested in. You cannot
> follow everything.

Perhaps I'm being a bit over dramatic, but it does, in my mind, describe
what you seem to be doing, You come in and say that the list software
isn't working the way you would prefer, but for this conversation,
everyone else needs to change how they use the list so you can
participate, since you don't care enough for the list to receive email
from it for a few days to discuss the issue, or for you to the archives
to see replies. You basically said, if you don't do it the way *I*
asked, I won't see what you said, (implying that you don't care).

Note, In Mail Readers, topics DO matter and they can sort and organize
based on them, but then they keep all the messages organized in a way
that makes this fairly easy to do. Perhaps you don't realize that the
Mailman core DOESN'T keep a history of all messages posted, it passes
the message off to an archive that handle that job.

>
> Most mailing lists labelled as "users" explicitly state that users are
> welcome to ask questions. I have participated in many such mailing
> lists, mostly for a short time, because I am using a lot of
> open-source software. I have not (really) subscribed to any of them.
> But I am listening, at least to my subjects. I am participating in
> this matter.
>
> It is unrealistic to expect general users to subscribe to every
> mailing list and read many messages before they ask the one important
> question for them today. It is unrealistic to hope that this will help
> grow a community.
The expectation for a mailing list, is that someone with a question will
come and hopefully first browse through the archives (perhaps with a
search) to see if the question has already been answered, then if not,
subscribe to post the question, and read the list for replies, and when
the question is answered, they perhaps will unsubscribe. It is expected
that before posting someone will look at the list and see how it is
expected that a support question will be asked (some lists have a very
detailed list of information they want about your configuration if
asking about a problem, as that is what is needed to solve it). To just
barge in and do it 'their own way' is just being impolite.
>
> I am not asking for people to "go out of their way to answer in a
> special way". I am saying that Mailman should do it automatically. See
> below.
As I said before in my messagel it CAN'T. Mail doesn't work that way,
and it becomes impractical to try and track that.
>
> If you think users like me, who do not subscribe and read everything,
> interrupt and do not really contribute with their messages, your best
> defence is to make this mailing list private. However, if this were my
> open-source project, I would rather not build such communication
> barriers. This includes dropping terms like "spam" or "a person who
> basically interrupts" around them.
>
>
> Of course there is the concept of 'Topic' in a mailing list. Mailman,
> the web interface, or whatever, does know how to group topics
> together. That is an obvious feature, because people tend to
> work/participate in threads.
As I said above, the Archive, since it keeps all the messages, has the
concept of a topic, but NOT a concept of a subscriber (except perhaps
for authorization to see parts of the web interface). There is no way
for a person to see a selected set of topics. Note also that to keep
things manageable, it breaks things up into monthly chunks, to this
message won't be tied to other related messages from the previous month.
>
> It is true that Mailman cannot achieve 100 % reliability, because it
> is based on e-mail. Nobody would expect that, not even in web-only
> forums (notification e-mails can also get lost). But Mailman should at
> least try its best. It has the e-mail subject and some extra headers
> to help. That would be enough in most scenarios, like it is usually
> enough for the web archives. Filtering short prefixes like "Re:" has
> never been a great problem. And threads participated by humans do not
> last forever. My guess is, it would mostly work.

Try to implement it! One thing to note, Mailman 2 does not have a
relational 

Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Chip Davis]

On 2/1/2019 3:30 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:


This is becoming tiresome...


Indeed.  Except I'd substitute the second-person pronoun for the third...

Mailman has a long page with settings like digest mode, stop delivery 
(holiday mode), and many, many more. Other communication platforms 
like Google Group allow you to manage subscriptions per topic. How 
about some new settings like this:


[ x ]  Automatically follow topics/subjects/threads I have 
participated in.


What you are asking for is not impossible but it is not a SMOP.  It 
will require a significant effort on the part of volunteer developers 
and result in a significant increase in the size of the package, with 
a concomitant increase in volunteer support and administration effort.



And, as has been pointed out previously in this discussion, there is a
difference between mailing lists and web forums or bulletin boards...


There is no such difference. It is all in your head. 


You have been provided several patient, thoughtful, and perfectly 
clear explanations that there _is_ a difference between a listserver 
and a forum/BB, starting with the distinction between a "push" 
interface and a "pull" one.


There are 
communication platforms that have both interfaces, e-mail and web.


Yes, but they are not as lithe or lissome as Mailman, and more 
difficult to administer.


Other systems can do it. I understand that you do not want to 
implement it yourself in Mailman, but why oppose the idea?


One word: spork.

There are plenty of web forum offerings, many free, that have some 
sort of email access, usually as an afterthought.  As such, they are 
the software equivalent of a spoon into which someone cut notches, 
making it a lousy fork and a poor spoon.


I, for one, have no time to waste logging into dozens of fora looking 
for postings of interest.  Such postings are emailed to me, in the 
same way that notes to all of my email accounts are.  My MUA does the 
spam-filtering, searching, sorting, filing, display, and composition 
functions.  I need only that one (programmable) tool to handle all my 
inputs.


-Chip-

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Christian F Buser via Mailman-Users]

Hello R. Diez. On Fri, 1 Feb 2019 09:30:54 +0100, you wrote:

> Other systems can do it. I understand that you do not want to 
> implement it yourself in Mailman, but why oppose the idea?

Then use these "other systems", please. 

Or try to implement the solution suggested by tlhackque in his/her mail on Thu, 
31 Jan 2019 13:35:20 -0500. But I see from your message at Fri, 1 Feb 2019 
09:14:49 +0100 that you prefer to have others do the work for you...

And no, you do not need to Cc: me for each of your messages. 

Christian

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[R. Diez via Mailman-Users]

Except then you run into ethical issues and possible legal violations of
emailing people who have not opted-n to receive the email.



This is becoming tiresome...

When you e-mail or subscribe to a mailing list, you are opting in to receive e-mail. If you participate in a topic/subject/thread, of course 
you expect to receive e-mails about those. That is what mailing lists are about. That should stand in court.


Mailman has a long page with settings like digest mode, stop delivery (holiday mode), and many, many more. Other communication platforms 
like Google Group allow you to manage subscriptions per topic. How about some new settings like this:


[ x ]  Automatically follow topics/subjects/threads I have participated in.

And a reset button for the unlikely emergency:

( Drop all automatic following for all threads )



[...]
you have to create an account so you can post.


This is mostly the case because of spam.

I never said that I oppose the subscription step. But that should be some kind 
of authentication and opt in disclaimer.

I am against that you must then read everything. Or nothing. Or manually create filters on your e-mail box. Or some other non-practical way 
that turn people off before coming by.




And, as has been pointed out previously in this discussion, there is a
difference between mailing lists and web forums or bulletin boards...


There is no such difference. It is all in your head. There are communication platforms that have both interfaces, e-mail and web. You can 
configure and use your mailing lists / forums / whatever in many ways. You can state your own policies in your own mailing lists. People 
participating in mailing lists do work in threads. That is how humans operate.


Other systems can do it. I understand that you do not want to implement it 
yourself in Mailman, but why oppose the idea?

Regards,
  rdiez
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[R. Diez via Mailman-Users]

> [...]

I will ask you how much you are willing to talk to a person who
basically interrupts, says they aren't really interested in the general
conversation, so isn't really listening, but if you go out of your way
to answer in a special way they will hear you. (Which is one way to
describe what you are doing),


I do not understand why you are misrepresenting my actions. This is the second 
time in this list, but I have noticed this pattern elsewhere.

I am not interrupting anything. That is a silly thing to say in this context. A mailing list is not a conversation that can get interrupted. 
A mailing list revolves around "topics". That is why people sometimes ask to start a new thread if the subject changes. That is how you skip 
the things you are not interested in. You cannot follow everything.


Most mailing lists labelled as "users" explicitly state that users are welcome to ask questions. I have participated in many such mailing 
lists, mostly for a short time, because I am using a lot of open-source software. I have not (really) subscribed to any of them. But I am 
listening, at least to my subjects. I am participating in this matter.


It is unrealistic to expect general users to subscribe to every mailing list and read many messages before they ask the one important 
question for them today. It is unrealistic to hope that this will help grow a community.


I am not asking for people to "go out of their way to answer in a special way". 
I am saying that Mailman should do it automatically. See below.

If you think users like me, who do not subscribe and read everything, interrupt and do not really contribute with their messages, your best 
defence is to make this mailing list private. However, if this were my open-source project, I would rather not build such communication 
barriers. This includes dropping terms like "spam" or "a person who basically interrupts" around them.



Of course there is the concept of 'Topic' in a mailing list. Mailman, the web interface, or whatever, does know how to group topics 
together. That is an obvious feature, because people tend to work/participate in threads.


It is true that Mailman cannot achieve 100 % reliability, because it is based on e-mail. Nobody would expect that, not even in web-only 
forums (notification e-mails can also get lost). But Mailman should at least try its best. It has the e-mail subject and some extra headers 
to help. That would be enough in most scenarios, like it is usually enough for the web archives. Filtering short prefixes like "Re:" has 
never been a great problem. And threads participated by humans do not last forever. My guess is, it would mostly work.


Maybe some huge mailing list, like the Linux Kernel, would have to disable such a feature because of CPU or disk load. But most mailing 
lists could cope with that. Incidentally, on huge mailing lists, where no-one can read everything, people are more aware that you should 
address and/or copy the original poster, or they will not get the message.


It is silly to ask people to setup their own e-mail filters for each subject they are interested in, like others suggested here. Computers 
are there to help users, and not the other way around.


Other communication platforms, like Google Groups and https://forum.freifunk.net/ , have both an e-mail and a web interface. I rarely use 
those web interfaces, and they still do a pretty good job at keeping you in the loop for the topics you have participated in.


Unfortunately, I cannot contribute code to this project. It is not just lack of time (I have my own open-source projects), but I don't know 
Python yet.


Regards,
  rdiez
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Richard Damon]

On 1/31/19 12:58 PM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
>
> > [...]
>> I think you are talking here about a web forum, where you can
>> "subscribe"
>> to information posted to a certain thread. I never saw this in a real
>> mailing list.
>>
>> I Cc: this reply to you to make sure you see it - but I wonοΏ½t do
>> this for
>> every message I write to any mailing list normally.
> > [...]
>
>
> This is a serious shortcoming in Mailman. I am surprised that such a
> basic human communication issue has not been properly addressed.
>
> See here what kind of effect that can have. From the message below, a
> long discussion follows on this subject:
>
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2018-July/294510.html
>
> I would like to specifically mention the following page, which
> accurate describes the problem:
>
> http://david.woodhou.se/reply-to-list.html
>
> All that would not be necessary if Mailman were smart enough. It
> already knows how to group e-mails by subject. It could make sure the
> participants are all kept in the loop.
>
> Regards,
>   rdiez 

Mailman really CAN'T be smart enough, as email isn't that sort of media.
The reader of the message reads the message, and decides where to send
the reply to. THEY decide whether to copy you or not as an explicit
destination, and likely different people will choose different choices.
Mailman when it gets the message knows enough to be able to distribute
it to subscribers in their chosen way.

Email doesn't really have the concept of a 'Topic' like a forum, the
closest email has is the In-Reply-To and References headers, but if the
list is sort of busy (which would be the only real reason to want to
limit what you get from the list) then it is actually a lot of work to
track, as for every message the list would need to check for every
subscriber if they have 'followed' ANY of the messages that this message
is a reply to, and if so add this message to the list. The problem is
that while on a forum, all messages posted in a topic, will be connected
to THAT topic, an email message doesn't necessarily keep track of all
the messages, or even the original message that it is a reply to, by the
standard, it is supposed to at a minimum refer to the message it is a
direct reply, and possible some number or previous messages in the chain.

The sort by subject is a very different thing, as that doesn't need to
know about individual subscribers, and if the 'topic' gets broken
because someone edited the subject slightly it isn't an issue, as the
data is still all there, will if you tried to keep a list of subjects
that a subscriber was interested in, they won't get messages where some
small change was made in the subject. Small changes can sometimes happen
just by slightly mis-configured software, doing things like adding
additional re: prefixes

I will ask you how much you are willing to talk to a person who
basically interrupts, says they aren't really interested in the general
conversation, so isn't really listening, but if you go out of your way
to answer in a special way they will hear you. (Which is one way to
describe what you are doing),

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Mark Sapiro]

On 1/31/19 12:05 PM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
> 
> I asked about a way around a perceived limitation, and in the face of
> the answer, I contributed with reasoning and examples (a couple of
> links) about a missing feature and why it is important. You may not like
> my view. You may have a strong idea about how mailing list
> administrators should use your software. But am I spamming? Is this
> discussion not welcome here then?


I don't think anyone said you weren't entitled to post or that your post
was unwelcome.

People were responding to your desire to be able to post to a Mailman
list (any list, not just this one) and then receive all replies in that
thread and only that thread whether or not you were explicitly addressed.

Have you considered that you could subscribe for a while with delivery
enabled and then at your end filter out mail from the list that doesn't
match your subject or maybe doesn't contain References: to your post.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[R. Diez via Mailman-Users]

> [...]

If you have no connection to them, but post to the list for
your own benefit, that is called "spam".  It is generally considered
somewhere between rude and criminal.

> [...]

Your comments are surprisingly unfair for someone in a mailing list for mailing 
list software.

Let's take me as an example. I do have a connection with you. I am a user of your software, on multiple mailing lists. And this particular mailing 
list is open for anybody. It's fine to drop by for a short while. I did not see anywhere any notice that only close affiliates are welcome. Heck, this 
mailing list is called "users", and not "developers" or "mailman clan only".


I asked about a way around a perceived limitation, and in the face of the answer, I contributed with reasoning and examples (a couple of links) about 
a missing feature and why it is important. You may not like my view. You may have a strong idea about how mailing list administrators should use your 
software. But am I spamming? Is this discussion not welcome here then?


Maybe you are implying that only people who read all posts for a few weeks and commit further resources to this project are entitled to voice their 
matters here. I find this a strange view on how to develop a community. It is rather off-putting.


Other projects have benefited from a bug report or a small patch I sent to 
their mailing lists. I was never actually subscribed to any of those.

If all this actually bugs you, maybe you can convince you community to make this mailing list private for proven contributors, and leave out those 
people who probably just want to benefit from your open-source project?


Regards,
  rdiez
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Keith Seyffarth]

> All that would not be necessary if Mailman were smart enough. It
> already knows how to group e-mails by subject. It could make sure the
> participants 
> are all kept in the loop.

Except then you run into ethical issues and possible legal violations of
emailing people who have not opted-n to receive the email. Just posting
to a web forum does not automatically subscribe you to a thread, you
have to check that you want notifications - and before you can even get
to that point, you have to create an account so you can post. And, as
has been pointed out previously in this discussion, there is a
difference between mailing lists and web forums or bulletin boards...


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[Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

R. Diez via Mailman-Users writes:

 > I have the following recurring problem with mailing lists all over
 > the Internet: people do reply to my posts, by they do not address
 > or copy me in their replies. They send their e-mails only to the
 > mailing list. Or they reply to the previous reply, and forget to
 > copy the original poster.

A mailing list may send mail to tens, thousands, or millions of
people.  If you have no connection to them, but post to the list for
your own benefit, that is called "spam".  It is generally considered
somewhere between rude and criminal.  At the very least you should
establish a minimal connection by subscribing.

 > This problem has annoyed me (and other people on the Internet) for
 > a long time.

It's not a problem with mailing lists; the kind of interaction you
desire is not what they're designed for.  That kind of interaction has
its place, but the software has to implement a "pull" model so that
nobody needs to make any effort to ignore everybody else.

 > Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I
 > post to a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I
 > then get an e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.

Mailman is not forum software.  Mailing lists support communities of
people, not question and answer threads.  If you want forum behavior,
use forum software, or in some applications you can use an issue
tracker.  If the community prefers mailing lists, they have a reason
for that, and you're out of luck: join the community and deal with the
mail, or look for replies in the archives.

 > Is there any way to achieve that with Mailman?

Not as a subscriber, no.  Mailing lists simply don't work that way,
because they're fundamentally based on a "push" model.  The only way
to get the behavior you want is to switch to forum or tracker
software based on a "pull" model.

It's possible that in a future version of Mailman 3 a feature called
"dynamic sublists" will be available, but it is dependent on the
poster taking special action to create the thread.  It doesn't allow
you to exclude all mail except the single thread you're interested in:
to get any posts you must subscribe, and then you'll see all thread
roots.  Of course, you can already have this with an appropriately
configured threading mail client, but dynamic sublists save bandwidth
and diskspace.

Again, if you want forum behavior, convince the community to use forum
software.

Steve

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[tlhackque via Mailman-Users]

On 31-Jan-19 05:11, R. Diez wrote:
> Hi all:
>
> I have the following recurring problem with mailing lists all over the
> Internet: people do reply to my posts, by they do not address or copy
> me in their replies. They send their e-mails only to the mailing list.
> Or they reply to the previous reply, and forget to copy the original
> poster.
>
> So I do not get a copy of the relevant messages straight away. If need
> to manually fish their answers from the web interface. If there is
> one. And then composing e-mails is cumbersome. And the subject
> threading no longer works properly.
>
> This problem has annoyed me (and other people on the Internet) for a
> long time.
>
> I cannot subscribe to every mailing list I need to occasionally use.
> It's far too much. This e-mail is the perfect example of such a
> come-ask-and-go-again scenario.
>
> If I need to subscribe in order to post a question, I turn off mail
> delivery straight away.
>
> Getting a digest with all e-mails does not help either. Replying to a
> single e-mail in this mode is cumbersome too. Besides, I do not want
> to manually skip other messages which do not interest me.
>
> Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I post
> to a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I then
> get an e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.
>
> The "topic" feature in Mailman is different. Very few people use it. I
> need something based on the e-mail subject.
>
> Is there any way to achieve that with Mailman?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>   rdiez
>
>
While I sympathize, I should also point out that this behavior goes
against the underlying philosophy of many mailing lists.

In that context, it is viewed as "selfish" to only ask for help while
never providing any.  If you don't read the list, you can't offer help
to others.  You don't have to be an 'expert' to be able to answer
questions, or to help an 'expert' to understand a novice's point of
view.  Communities are built from cooperation.

It should be up to a list owner to decide whether or not to enable a
feature that facilitates "take but don't give" behavior.  The list norms
should decide if "ask and run" or "ignore everyone else" is considered
anti-social/exploitive or acceptable use. 

In my experience, people paid to support a product might be happy with
the feature enabled, while a volunteer community might oppose it. 

Of course, today you can subscribe to the list and put a client-side
filter in your MUA that discards any post that doesn't reference your
post.  (By subject or "References" header.)  That doesn't require any
new support in Mailman.


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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[R. Diez via Mailman-Users]

> [...]

I think you are talking here about a web forum, where you can "subscribe"
to information posted to a certain thread. I never saw this in a real mailing 
list.

I Cc: this reply to you to make sure you see it - but I wonοΏ½t do this for
every message I write to any mailing list normally.

> [...]


This is a serious shortcoming in Mailman. I am surprised that such a basic 
human communication issue has not been properly addressed.

See here what kind of effect that can have. From the message below, a long 
discussion follows on this subject:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2018-July/294510.html

I would like to specifically mention the following page, which accurate 
describes the problem:

http://david.woodhou.se/reply-to-list.html

All that would not be necessary if Mailman were smart enough. It already knows how to group e-mails by subject. It could make sure the participants 
are all kept in the loop.


Regards,
  rdiez
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Mark Sapiro]

On 1/31/19 2:11 AM, R. Diez via Mailman-Users wrote:
> 
> Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I post to
> a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I then get an
> e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.
> 
> The "topic" feature in Mailman is different. Very few people use it. I
> need something based on the e-mail subject.
> 
> Is there any way to achieve that with Mailman?


Systers Mailman has a 'dlist' (dynamic sublists) feature which may be
what you want. This is mentioned at
.
That post is old and the repo at 
mentioned therein is also old, but it still exists although the
documentation links in the post and the README files in the repo are all
broken.

We have been looking at dlists or something similar for Mailman 3, and
Systers also has done Mailman 3 work (see ).

You may be able to port the changes from 
to more current Mailman, or perhaps contact Systers for more
information. It appears they are still using a Mailman 2.1.12 version
with their changes. I.e., see .

-- 
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San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[Christian F Buser via Mailman-Users]

Hello R. Diez via Mailman-Users. On Thu, 31 Jan 2019 11:11:48 +0100, you wrote:

> I have the following recurring problem with mailing lists all over 
> the Internet: people do reply to my posts, by they do not address or 
> copy me in their replies. They send their e-mails only to the mailing 
> list. Or they reply to the previous reply, and forget to copy the 
> original poster.

If I post a question to a list, I am also a subscriber to the list and I get 
replies to my question that way. 
 
> So I do not get a copy of the relevant messages straight away.

A mailing list may have a web archive, but the standard thing is that the 
conversation goes via e-mail. 

> I cannot subscribe to every mailing list I need to occasionally use. 
> It's far too much. This e-mail is the perfect example of such a 
> come-ask-and-go-again scenario.

So, to post to _this_ list, you had to subscribe to it. You may remain a 
subscriber until your question is answered. Where is the problem? 

> If I need to subscribe in order to post a question, I turn off mail 
> delivery straight away.

Aha. 

> Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I post 
> to a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I then 
> get an e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.

I think you are talking here about a web forum, where you can "subscribe" to 
information posted to a certain thread. I never saw this in a real mailing 
list. 

I Cc: this reply to you to make sure you see it - but I won’t do this for every 
message I write to any mailing list normally. 

Christian 

-- 
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Hilfe fuer Strassenkinder in Ghana: http://www.chance-for-children.org
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[Mailman-Users] Automatic subscription based on e-mail subject

[R. Diez via Mailman-Users]

Hi all:

I have the following recurring problem with mailing lists all over the Internet: people do reply to my posts, by they do not address or copy 
me in their replies. They send their e-mails only to the mailing list. Or they reply to the previous reply, and forget to copy the original 
poster.


So I do not get a copy of the relevant messages straight away. If need to manually fish their answers from the web interface. If there is 
one. And then composing e-mails is cumbersome. And the subject threading no longer works properly.


This problem has annoyed me (and other people on the Internet) for a long time.

I cannot subscribe to every mailing list I need to occasionally use. It's far too much. This e-mail is the perfect example of such a 
come-ask-and-go-again scenario.


If I need to subscribe in order to post a question, I turn off mail delivery 
straight away.

Getting a digest with all e-mails does not help either. Replying to a single e-mail in this mode is cumbersome too. Besides, I do not want 
to manually skip other messages which do not interest me.


Other forum software has a nice feature for this scenario: If I post to a subject, I am automatically subscribed to that subject. I then get 
an e-mail for any new posts with the same subject.


The "topic" feature in Mailman is different. Very few people use it. I need 
something based on the e-mail subject.

Is there any way to achieve that with Mailman?

Thanks in advance,
  rdiez

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