Grokbase › Groups › Python › mailman-users › July 2008
FAQ
Hi Friends. More newby questions, I am afraid.

1. Is there no capability to edit moderated messages? I have a couple of moderated members that have asked me to edit their messages, and I don't see how. (FYI, they tend to promote their own products within their otherwise extremely valuable posts).

2. When I reject a moderated message with an explanation, the rejection note comes from listname-bounces@ . So when the member replies to that message, it sends me a note saying that it received an unrecognized bounce, and buried in the note is the member's response.

Shouldn't rejected & annotated messages come from listname-admin@ instead? I bet there is a good reason for this that I do not know.

3. More of a comment than a question. Mailman archives do not perfectly allow importing Eudora mailboxes, even though they are a form of mbox-formatted mailboxes. Most messages seem to do fine but maybe (I am not sure) those few that do not import well have a blank line before Eudora's "From: ???@??? [date time]" header. Not sure if that is the cause, but it is possible.

4. Finally, I want to reiterate the desire for a web-based interface for responding to messages. I'd estimate that 5-10% of my list members used this feature when we were at Topica. I also would value a way for admins to remove individual messages from the archives through a web-based .

I understand that work on Mailman is done by a handful of dedicated volunteers, and I do appreciate the software and its robustness. I appreciate you folks that put so much time and energy into it and into helping us users.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Michael Welch, volunteer
Redwood Alliance
PO Box 293
Arcata, CA 95518
707-822-7884
mwelch at redwoodalliance.org
www.redwoodalliance.org

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  • Brad Knowles at Jul 25, 2008 at 6:23 pm ⇧

    Michael Welch wrote:

    1. Is there no capability to edit moderated messages? I have a couple of
    moderated members that have asked me to edit their messages, and I don't
    see how. (FYI, they tend to promote their own products within their
    otherwise extremely valuable posts).
    There is no real capability to edit moderated messages, no. There is what I
    would classify as a work-around, described in FAQ 3.9 at
    <http://wiki.list.org/x/24A9>.

    If you go to the Mailman FAQ landing page at
    <http://wiki.list.org/display/DOC/Frequently+Asked+Questions> and do a
    search on "edit moderated", this should be the second item that shows up on
    the list.
    3. More of a comment than a question. Mailman archives do not perfectly
    allow importing Eudora mailboxes, even though they are a form of
    mbox-formatted mailboxes. Most messages seem to do fine but maybe (I am
    not sure) those few that do not import well have a blank line before
    Eudora's "From: ???@??? [date time]" header. Not sure if that is the
    cause, but it is possible.
    Eudora mailboxes are not in proper 7th edition mbox format, so they cannot
    be imported directly. You need to get that "???@???" crap fixed to be
    something reasonable before you can import them.

    Why the hell Eudora decided to be so damn stupid as to use something that is
    almost-but-not-quite a proper mbox format I will never know, but then Eudora
    is dead so I guess the point is more or less moot.
    4. Finally, I want to reiterate the desire for a web-based interface for
    responding to messages. I'd estimate that 5-10% of my list members used
    this feature when we were at Topica. I also would value a way for admins
    to remove individual messages from the archives through a web-based .

    I understand that work on Mailman is done by a handful of dedicated
    volunteers, and I do appreciate the software and its robustness. I
    appreciate you folks that put so much time and energy into it and into
    helping us users.
    These things are on the list, and may be addressed in Mailman3. I don't
    know if we'll get a chance to look at them before then.

    If you have code you can contribute to fix these issues, that would greatly
    speed up things between now and whenever a future version of Mailman3 might
    ship that may address them.

    --
    Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
    LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
  • Michael Welch at Jul 25, 2008 at 10:11 pm ⇧

    Brad Knowles wrote at 11:23 AM 7/25/2008:
    Eudora mailboxes are not in proper 7th edition mbox format, so they cannot be imported directly. You need to get that "???@???" crap fixed to be something reasonable before you can import them.
    OK, maybe you can lead me to the specs for 7th edition mbox format.

    But I think that if I can get a blank line in front of the "crap" that it may import OK.

    Or else maybe I have to move the From: header to the first line of the message, delete the Eudora "crap," and make sure there is a blank line before each message in the file.

    - - - - - - - - - - - -
    Michael Welch, volunteer
    Redwood Alliance
    PO Box 293
    Arcata, CA 95518
    707-822-7884
    mwelch at redwoodalliance.org
    www.redwoodalliance.org
  • Brad Knowles at Jul 25, 2008 at 10:22 pm ⇧

    Michael Welch wrote:

    OK, maybe you can lead me to the specs for 7th edition mbox format.
    Formal specs? No. But you can see the page at
    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox> for an informal discussion of the subject.
    But I think that if I can get a blank line in front of the "crap" that it
    may import OK.
    A blank line isn't going to help. You need to replace the "???@???" crap
    with the appropriate information. In fact, what needs to go there should be
    the contents of the "Return-Path:" header, just without the angle brackets.
    Or else maybe I have to move the From: header to the first line of the
    message, delete the Eudora "crap," and make sure there is a blank line
    before each message in the file.
    No, you can't delete the "From_" line, because that is the only delimiter
    that is used to separate one message from the next.

    Before you start mucking about with this, I would encourage you to read up
    on what Eudora screwed up, so that you'll have a better idea of what you
    need to fix.

    --
    Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
    LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
  • Brad Knowles at Jul 25, 2008 at 10:26 pm ⇧

    Brad Knowles wrote:

    Formal specs? No. But you can see the page at
    <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox> for an informal discussion of the
    subject.
    Note that this page links to another page at
    <http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/mail-mbox-formats.html>
    that actually has a more detailed discussion of the formats and issues in
    question, along with specific comments along the lines of:

    X means Y but it doesn't mean Z no matter how much you
    might otherwise think it would

    --
    Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
    LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
  • Mark Sapiro at Jul 26, 2008 at 3:31 pm ⇧

    Michael Welch wrote:
    2. When I reject a moderated message with an explanation, the
    rejection note comes from listname-bounces@ . So when the member
    replies to that message, it sends me a note saying that it received
    an unrecognized bounce, and buried in the note is the member's
    response.

    Shouldn't rejected & annotated messages come from listname-admin@
    instead? I bet there is a good reason for this that I do not know.

    Brad has already responded to 1., 3. and 4. As far as 2. is concerned,
    you raise a good point, although you mean the messages should be From:
    listname-owner at .... listname-admin at ... is actually a deprecated
    synonym for listname-bounces at ...

    I don't think there is a good reason for the reject to come from
    listname-bounces at ....

    This came about in the implementation of automated bounce processing in
    Mailman 2.1. Prior to 2.1, the list owner address was
    listname-admin at .... This address was also used as the envelope sender
    of messages so bounces would return to the list owner for attention.
    With automated bounce processing, the envelope sender was changed to
    listname-bounces at ..., and the listname-admin at ..., was deprecated in
    favor of listname-owner at ... and processed the same as
    listname-bounces at ....


    At that point, the processing of refusal messages was changed. The
    intent was that replies go to the owner. In fact the log message for
    the change says

    __refuse(): In the refuse.txt, use the -owner address as the
    %(adminaddr)s expansion so that when the human acts on this message,
    they'll contact a human without going through the bounce processor.

    The actual change
    <http://mailman.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mailman?view=rev&revisionP19>
    changed the address inserted into the text of the refusal to the
    listname-owner at ... address, but it changed the From: to the
    listname-bounces at ... address.

    I think this was a mistake. I'm Ccing mailman-developers in case
    someone remembers some reason for this, but barring objection, I'll
    change it for the next release.

    --
    Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers,
    San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

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postedJul 25, '08 at 6:12p
activeJul 26, '08 at 3:31p
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Brad Knowles: 3 posts Michael Welch: 2 posts Mark Sapiro: 1 post

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