[mlmmj] Getting resent mail when subscribing to list

[mlmmj] Getting resent mail when subscribing to list

[Matti Nykyri]

Hello

I recently installed mlmmj on my server. I would like to add an option to tunables so that list could be configured to send old posts when people subscribe to the list

I'm thinking of adding a tunable subget (normal) that will as many old posts as defined in the tunable. I'll download source from git and supply a patch if you are interested. 

--
Matti

Re: [mlmmj] Getting resent mail when subscribing to list

[Chris Knadle]

On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 13:02:15 Matti Nykyri wrote:
> Hello
> 
> I recently installed mlmmj on my server. I would like to add an option to
> tunables so that list could be configured to send old posts when people
> subscribe to the list
> 
> I'm thinking of adding a tunable subget (normal) that will as many old posts
> as defined in the tunable. I'll download source from git and supply a patch
> if you are interested.

I'm not a developer of mlmmj (yet) but sending someone /all/ of the old posts 
automatically upon signup doesn't sound like a good idea, because that could 
have all kinds of unintended consequences.

Say, for instance, that the list has 10,000 messages in it, and 4 people sign 
up for the list today.  Yikes.  Or, a user of such a list removes one's self 
from the list, then later the same day signs back up for it thus triggering 
getting the entire list history again for no good reason.

A more interesting option which could do the same thing would be to allow a 
subscriber of the list to be sent a particular /range/ of list emails.  Mlmmj 
comes with the facility for a subscriber to retrieve a /particular/ list email 
via sending a message to <listname>+get-N@<list-email-addr> where "N" is the 
message #; if this could be expanded to <listname>+get-{N-M}@<list-email-addr> 
such that the "{N-M}" could be parsed as a range and mlmmj modified to send 
that range of emails back to the user, then the user could have the /option/ 
of retrieving the portion of the mailing list that they're interested in.

Let me know what you think of this tweak to the idea.

  -- Chris

--
Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle@coredump.us

Re: [mlmmj] Getting resent mail when subscribing to list

[Piotr Auksztulewicz]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 04:29:23PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 13:02:15 Matti Nykyri wrote:
> > I recently installed mlmmj on my server. I would like to add an
> > option to tunables so that list could be configured to send old
> > posts when people subscribe to the list
> A more interesting option which could do the same thing would be
> to allow a subscriber of the list to be sent a particular /range/
> of list emails.

The 'get-range' option is more sensible. It would be rather annoying
(for me at least) to get a bunch of emails just after subscribing
to a list.  Besides, sending such bursts will not only load both the
list server and the new subscriber's server - it potentialy can land
the list server on some blacklists.

Better still, keep a nice web archive of the list and have the list
welcome message point to it.

And for those queer types that prefer having the whole archive in
their email client instead, subscribe some local user account to the
list and configure delivery to single-file mailbox for this account -
then put the mailbox on (anonymous?) FTP :-)

-- 
Piotr "Malgond" Auksztulewicz                     firstname@lastname.net

Re: [mlmmj] Getting resent mail when subscribing to list

[Matti Nykyri]

On Mar 19, 2014, at 22:29, Chris Knadle <Chris.Knadle@coredump.us> wrote:

> On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 13:02:15 Matti Nykyri wrote:
>> Hello
>> 
>> I recently installed mlmmj on my server. I would like to add an option to
>> tunables so that list could be configured to send old posts when people
>> subscribe to the list
>> 
>> I'm thinking of adding a tunable subget (normal) that will as many old posts
>> as defined in the tunable. I'll download source from git and supply a patch
>> if you are interested.
> 
> I'm not a developer of mlmmj (yet) but sending someone /all/ of the old posts 
> automatically upon signup doesn't sound like a good idea, because that could 
> have all kinds of unintended consequences.
> 
> Say, for instance, that the list has 10,000 messages in it, and 4 people sign 
> up for the list today.  Yikes.  Or, a user of such a list removes one's self 
> from the list, then later the same day signs back up for it thus triggering 
> getting the entire list history again for no good reason.
> 
> A more interesting option which could do the same thing would be to allow a 
> subscriber of the list to be sent a particular /range/ of list emails.  Mlmmj 
> comes with the facility for a subscriber to retrieve a /particular/ list email 
> via sending a message to <listname>+get-N@<list-email-addr> where "N" is the 
> message #; if this could be expanded to <listname>+get-{N-M}@<list-email-addr> 
> such that the "{N-M}" could be parsed as a range and mlmmj modified to send 
> that range of emails back to the user, then the user could have the /option/ 
> of retrieving the portion of the mailing list that they're interested in.
> 
Yes, send 10000 emails for a person subscribing a list is, how do you put it, well idiotic. When I mean tunable subget (normal) I mean a file under control/ directory that specifies how many most recent messages will be sent to the subscriber on subscribe. As you probably know all normal tunables (not list nor boolean tunables) are parsed to some scalar value or string. So that is what i mean with the normal. Subget would be a scalar value of how many recent mails to send on subscribe.

Of course this value needs to be reasonable. For example around 5 or 10 emails. And it is up to the list administrator to set this value. Why would an administrator set the value to around 10000? If he wants to spam peoples mail he can use any script to send 100000 emails with only a little effort anyways. They should of course get trapped by modern span filters on receiving end.

But why would you need this new tunable? Well I'm dealing with regular women that don't have clue how get archives from some mailing list. And when they join this a list/conversation it's good tho know what people are talking about. So they can immediately join the party. Of course it would be much wiser to send post from this day or with some aging value or the hole threads that have been active for today, but it's much simpler to just implement sending of last 10 mails for example.

Also the range thing that you proposed is actually a good idea and easy to implement. I can also look into it. Just cloned the git branch.

> Let me know what you think of this tweak to the idea.
> 
> -- Chris
> 
> --
> Chris Knadle
> Chris.Knadle@coredump.us
> 
> 

Re: [mlmmj] Getting resent mail when subscribing to list

[Matti Nykyri]

On Mar 19, 2014, at 23:04, Piotr Auksztulewicz <mlmmj-listrcpt@hasiok.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 04:29:23PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
>> On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 13:02:15 Matti Nykyri wrote:
>>> I recently installed mlmmj on my server. I would like to add an
>>> option to tunables so that list could be configured to send old
>>> posts when people subscribe to the list
>> A more interesting option which could do the same thing would be
>> to allow a subscriber of the list to be sent a particular /range/
>> of list emails.
> 
> The 'get-range' option is more sensible. It would be rather annoying
> (for me at least) to get a bunch of emails just after subscribing
> to a list.  Besides, sending such bursts will not only load both the
> list server and the new subscriber's server - it potentialy can land
> the list server on some blacklists.
> 
> Better still, keep a nice web archive of the list and have the list
> welcome message point to it.
> 
The archive is the best, but still needs to be setup. Even more setup is needed if some privacy is required... Although mailing list will never be truly private due to design. 

Actually implementing an encrypting mailing list would be quite an interesting challenge. The list would store public keys of the subscribers and post to the list would be encrypted with the list's key. The mails to the subscribers would be each encrypted with their own public keys. Security should never be underestimated.

> And for those queer types that prefer having the whole archive in
> their email client instead, subscribe some local user account to the
> list and configure delivery to single-file mailbox for this account -
> then put the mailbox on (anonymous?) FTP :-)
> 
> -- 
> Piotr "Malgond" Auksztulewicz                     firstname@lastname.net
> 
> 

-- 
-Matti

Re: [mlmmj] Getting resent mail when subscribing to list

[Chris Knadle]

On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 23:44:41 Matti Nykyri wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2014, at 22:29, Chris Knadle <Chris.Knadle@coredump.us> wrote:
> > On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 13:02:15 Matti Nykyri wrote:
> >> Hello
> >> 
> >> I recently installed mlmmj on my server. I would like to add an option to
> >> tunables so that list could be configured to send old posts when people
> >> subscribe to the list
> >> 
> >> I'm thinking of adding a tunable subget (normal) that will as many old
> >> posts as defined in the tunable. I'll download source from git and
> >> supply a patch if you are interested.

[...]
> When I mean tunable subget (normal) I mean a file under
> control/ directory that specifies how many most recent messages will be
> sent to the subscriber on subscribe.
[...]
> Of course this value needs to be reasonable. For example around 5 or 10
> emails.
[...]
> But why would you need this new tunable? Well I'm dealing with regular women
> that don't have clue how get archives from some mailing list. And when they
> join this a list/conversation it's good tho know what people are talking
> about. So they can immediately join the party.

Well there are a lot of issues concerning telling someone to "view headers" on 
list email messages; many people don't know how to do this, not least of which 
is complicated by the fact that every MUA seems to do this differently such 
that it turns into a game of 20 questions.  Q: "What mail client do you have?"  
A: "What's a mail client?"  ... Ugh.

However you can add a custom footer with the "footer" tunable that would say 
something like:

   "for mailing list options, email <list>+help@<list-addr>
    for further information,  email <list>+faq@<list-addr>"
    [and so on]

to make it more obvious what options there are and other helpful information.



But regardless -- I get your point and I see why you want this.

[...]
> Also the range thing that you proposed is actually a good idea and easy to
> implement. I can also look into it. Just cloned the git branch.

As you implement this keep in mind that there are limitations on what 
characters can appear in the "local part" (the part before the @) in an email 
address.  {}- characters are all fine which is why I suggested those.  Others 
like [] and space are not unless encompassed in quotation marks.  A simple 
pipe character (i.e. <list>+get-N|M@<list-addr>) could work too.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_address#Local_part

  -- Chris

--
Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle@coredump.us

Re: [mlmmj] Getting resent mail when subscribing to list

[Ben Schmidt]

On 20/03/14 8:45 AM, Matti Nykyri wrote:
> On Mar 19, 2014, at 23:04, Piotr Auksztulewicz <mlmmj-listrcpt@hasiok.net> wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 04:29:23PM -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, March 19, 2014 13:02:15 Matti Nykyri wrote:
>>>> I recently installed mlmmj on my server. I would like to add an
>>>> option to tunables so that list could be configured to send old
>>>> posts when people subscribe to the list
>>> A more interesting option which could do the same thing would be
>>> to allow a subscriber of the list to be sent a particular /range/
>>> of list emails.
>>
>> The 'get-range' option is more sensible. It would be rather annoying
>> (for me at least) to get a bunch of emails just after subscribing
>> to a list.  Besides, sending such bursts will not only load both the
>> list server and the new subscriber's server - it potentialy can land
>> the list server on some blacklists.
>>
>> Better still, keep a nice web archive of the list and have the list
>> welcome message point to it.
>>
> The archive is the best, but still needs to be setup. Even more setup
> is needed if some privacy is required... Although mailing list will
> never be truly private due to design.

I agree with most of what has been said here.

I probably wouldn't accept a patch which automatically sends list posts
when a user subscribes.

However, implementation of a range with +get would probably be OK
(though it should probably have some restriction, perhaps a tunable
maximum number of messages that can be retrieved this way; and thought
should be given to whether to deliver such messages individually or as
one or more digests--probably the digest is better). I would also be
happy with changes that facilitate putting a link to specific +get
address and/or an online archive in the welcome mail, e.g. a $lastindex$
substitution.

Putting these ideas together, perhaps this kind of syntax works:

- retrieve messages 123 to 456:
   listname+get-123-456@lists.domain.tld

- retrieve 123 messages, ending with message 456:
   listname+get-456-123@lists.domain.tld

- retrieve most recent 123 messages:
   listname+get--123@lists.domain.tld

- retrieve 10 most recent messages (for list texts):
   $list+$get-$lastindex$-10@$domain$
   $list+$get--10@$domain$
   (note that the first one will give the last ten messages prior to the
   text being sent, such as subscription time, whereas the second one
   will give the last ten messages at the time the user sends mail +get,
   which might be a useful link to include in the help email)

Happy coding!

Ben.