Re: [Mailman-Users] New to the List Serve - responding to posts issue

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Brad Knowles writes:

 > There are ways to force all replies to go back to the mailing list, yes. 

To expand a bit on what Brad said, there is a general, standard way to
set the address(es) that will be used for a basic reply.  I forget
where in the Mailman interface it is (I wouldn't touch it with a
ten-foot barge pole) but "Reply-To" is the keyword you're looking for.

Before you go searching for it, though, consider that 

(1) The intent of the Reply-To standard is to provide *authors*, not
mailing lists, with a way to specify *where the author* should be
contacted (on a paper document with multiple authors, this is
often identified as the "correspondence address").  As such,
almost all mail clients treat it as Word from On High.

In particular, with many mail clients users are forced to type in
any other address (or get it from their contact list), making
private replies extremely inconvenient.  But typically private
replies are more urgent and more sensitive.  A message that was
intended to be public that goes only to the author is a safer
failure mode than a private message inadvertently published.

In your case, at first glance it sounds like it's pretty safe.
The community members are moderated, so intemperate replies from
the peanut gallery can be held and you can ask the person if they
really wanted to send that.  But think about the failure mode: the
board members are *unmoderated*.  A sharp reply, or an inside
joke, by one of them *will be automatically passed through*, and
could easily damage the board's reputation severely (unless
they're all angels...).

I've also seen it used as an excuse for posting things that
shouldn't have been written in the first place.  "I'm really sorry
if somebody's feelings were hurt, but it's not my fault!  I didn't
realize that it was going to go to the whole list"

(2) There is a standard, which Mailman participates in, called
"List-Post".  A reasonably good mail client will generally offer a
Reply-to-List command that prefers that address to the author for
ordinary replies, but falls back to the author otherwise.  If your
community members use such a client, they'll generally get the
best of both worlds: a flexible client with convenient ways to
reply to author, to list, or to all, with a single command that
works almost all the time.

Unfortunately I don't know of any for Windows or the Mac offhand
(I use Unix-style clients on Linux or the Mac), but you might try
getting people to look at the help for their mail clients.  It
pays off in the long run with a more smoothly running list.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] New to the List Serve - responding to posts issue

[Brad Knowles]

on 4/3/09 1:29 PM, Robert McGuire said:


I just setup a list serve for my community's board of directors.  I
have all of the permissions set correctly and only the board are
members.  Everyone in community are non-members where their posts are
held for approval.


Someone is going to say it, so I'll try to be as nice as I can about it. 
 I'm sure you're new to this software, but "ListServ" is actually a 
particular brand of mailing list software, but it's not our brand.


Here in the Mailman community, we don't call them a "list serve".  We 
call them mailing lists.



I hope that by being the first to say this, I can pre-empt anyone else 
from being ... not so understanding.



My issues is:  When someone on the list responds to a post, their
response comes from their personal email address.  If the request
originator does not "reply to all", then the list serve is cut out of
the loop.

My question is:  For members of the list, is there a way for them to
respond directly from the list serve?  That way the address that
responses come from are always the list serve address and not their
personal address.


There are ways to force all replies to go back to the mailing list, yes. 
 However, the Mailman developers are pretty strongly opposed to using 
these methods in most cases -- this tends to lead to public exposure of 
messages that were meant to be sent privately, and that can be far, far 
more damaging than the reverse.


I've even seen experienced mail systems administrators with twenty-plus 
years of experience make this mistake.  And accidentally expose 
proprietary details of a product that should not have been publicly 
mentioned, at least not yet.



If you can convince me that you've got a case where this kind of thing 
isn't an issue, I'll be glad to point you to the documentation that 
discusses this subject.


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[Mailman-Users] New to the List Serve - responding to posts issue

[Robert McGuire]

I just setup a list serve for my community's board of directors.  I have all of 
the permissions set correctly and only the board are members.  Everyone in 
community are non-members where their posts are held for approval.
 
My issues is:  When someone on the list responds to a post, their response 
comes from their personal email address.  If the request originator does not 
"reply to all", then the list serve is cut out of the loop.
 
My question is:  For members of the list, is there a way for them to respond 
directly from the list serve?  That way the address that responses come from 
are always the list serve address and not their personal address.
 
Thanks,

Robert McGuire
Buford, GA 30518


  
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