email - replacing mailman

[David Beaumont]

We use 'mailman' to do our email but would much prefer Nabble to handle it, as I suspect would a lot of mailmnan users - it would more than halve the admin for us and for users.  And save a samll amount of money.

I list here the things that are stopping us:

1) Emailers don't seem to receive copies of their own emails

2) No option to moderate users posts, only ban the user.

3) No option to prefix the subject with our list name (DBAm:, DBAc: etc..)

4) Each user must remember and use a personalised 'to' address to email (Minor issue )
either addressed already or in the pipeline?

Thanks

David
www.barges.org

 

[David Beaumont]

sorry seemed to have missed off my question - are any of those issued fixed or in the pipeline to be fixed?  thanks

[Franklin <Nabble>]

David Beaumont wrote

1) Emailers don't seem to receive copies of their own emails

Fixed in upcoming release.

2) No option to moderate users posts, only ban the user.

You can remove posts now.  Isn't that enought?

3) No option to prefix the subject with our list name (DBAm:, DBAc: etc..)

We plan to simply prefix all emails with "[top-level-forum-name]".  Is this good enough?

4) Each user must remember and use a personalised 'to' address to email (Minor issue )
either addressed already or in the pipeline?

This is for spam prevention.  Do you have a better idea for how to avoid spam?

[David Beaumont]

Thanks for the prompt response.  

(1) is great.  

On (2) removing posts works well in a forum but when you are emailing the posts you cannot remove it once it has been posted - it has been emailed. the change to email functionality requires some method to (a) put temporary moderation on for all users and (b) to put particular users on moderation.  This is standard  in 'mailman'.

(3) prefixing all emails with "[top-level-forum-name]" is a bit lengthy to add to every email subject line, it would be nice to have the option to use an abbreviation.


(4) Each user must remember and use a personalised 'to' address to email (Minor issue ) -  I appreciate this is neat anti spam measure.  I think our users would get used to it.  At present we prevent spam by forcing registration with mailman, this seems to work fine.  

[Franklin <Nabble>]

David Beaumont wrote

On (2) removing posts works well in a forum but when you are emailing the posts you cannot remove it once it has been posted - it has been emailed. the change to email functionality requires some method to (a) put temporary moderation on for all users and (b) to put particular users on moderation.  This is standard  in 'mailman'.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "moderation".  Do you mean that you review the emails before they go out?  I haven't used mailman or other mailing list software, so I don't know how this generally works.

(3) prefixing all emails with "[top-level-forum-name]" is a bit lengthy to add to every email subject line, it would be nice to have the option to use an abbreviation.

I'm trying to avoid adding another field just for this.  How about if I let you end your top-level-forum-name with "[whatever]" and then check for that and use it if I find it.  So if your top forum is named "My Latest Greatest Mailing List", then the subject would be prefixed with "[My Latest Greatest Mailing List] " but if your top forum is named "My Latest Greatest Mailing List [my-list]", then the subject would be prefixed with "[my-list] ".

(4) Each user must remember and use a personalised 'to' address to email (Minor issue ) -  I appreciate this is neat anti spam measure.  I think our users would get used to it.  At present we prevent spam by forcing registration with mailman, this seems to work fine.  

We just cleaned up the idea of forum membership for this upcoming release, so maybe we will use this to allow members to use a fixed email address.  I will look into it.

[David Beaumont]

having some problems with nabble - having to re-write this.

yes we can put all uers on moderation inthe event of flaming breaking out.  this holds all posts for review.  The moderator can then approve a post, rehject it with a message or discard it.

Similarly we can put individual rogue users on moderation if they persistently send provactive rude or off topic emails.

Lastly there is an option to automatically put all new users on moderation until taken off - little used.

Your option for the subject line prefix is fine, especiually if we can put the [] bit at the front of the list name.

Thanks

David

[David Beaumont]

There is one other issue with switching from Mailman to Nabble for our
emails - archives.  Currently we have our own mailman copy, if we were to
dispense with mailman I know Nabble will keep the archives but are we able
to take a backup when we want?  This is a potential showstopper, please can
you tell me how to take our own backup copy of the archives Nabble holds for
us?
 
I trust Nabble but sometimes companies get taken over by less kindly and
more greedy ones who could hold our priceless archives to ransom.
 
Thanks

David

[David Beaumont]

Franklin just to let you know  I have got the message from Nabble "     Some
javascript/style in this post has been disabled"  but all I did was post in
plain text and then reply to the post - I think T the javascript was added
by Nabble.  The message is here:
http://n2.nabble.com/goodbye-pink-td3257078.html#a3262047
 
Any info on us being able to get backups of our archives, that would be a
show stopper for mailman migration.


Best wishes

David


________________________________

        From: David Beaumont [mailto:[hidden email]]
        Sent: 30 June 2009 01:03
        To: 'Post 3178060 on Nabble'
        Subject: RE: email - replacing mailman
       
       
        Thanks for the prompt response.  
         
        (1) is great.  
         
        On (2) removing posts works well in a forum but when you are
emailing the posts you cannot remove it once it has been posted - it has
been emailed. the change to email functionality requires some method to (a)
put temporary moderation on for all users and (b) to put particular users on
moderation.  This is standard  in 'mailman'.
         
        (3) prefixing all emails with "[top-level-forum-name]" is a bit
lengthy to add to every email subject line, it would be nice to have the
option to use an abbreviation.
         

        (4) Each user must remember and use a personalised 'to' address to
email (Minor issue ) -  I appreciate this is neat anti spam measure.  I
think our users would get used to it.  At present we prevent spam by forcing
registration with mailman, this seems to work fine.  
         
         

        David


________________________________

                From: Franklin Schmidt <Nabble> (via Nabble)
[mailto:[hidden email]]
                Sent: 30 June 2009 00:43
                To: David Beaumont
                Subject: Re: email - replacing mailman
               
               

                        David Beaumont wrote:
                        1) Emailers don't seem to receive copies of their
own emails

                Fixed in upcoming release.
               
               

                        2) No option to moderate users posts, only ban the
user.

                You can remove posts now.  Isn't that enought?
               
               

                        3) No option to prefix the subject with our list
name (DBAm:, DBAc: etc..)

                We plan to simply prefix all emails with
"[top-level-forum-name]".  Is this good enough?
               
               

                        4) Each user must remember and use a personalised
'to' address to email (Minor issue )
                        either addressed already or in the pipeline?

                This is for spam prevention.  Do you have a better idea for
how to avoid spam?
               
               
               
________________________________

                This email is a reply to your post @
http://n2.nabble.com/email---replacing-mailman-tp3175830p3178060.html
                You can reply by email or by visting the link above.
               

[Hugo <Nabble>]

David Beaumont wrote

I have got the message from Nabble "Some javascript/style in this post has been disabled"  but all I did was post in plain text and then reply to the post - I think T the javascript was added
by Nabble.  The message is here:
http://n2.nabble.com/goodbye-pink-td3257078.html#a3262047

That post was sent by email and it had full HTML tags (like html, body, etc.). So Nabble disabled those tags in order to keep the thread page working.

David Beaumont wrote

Any info on us being able to get backups of our archives, that would be a
show stopper for mailman migration.

We are working on this feature right now. Basically, we will export monthly archives in XML format. This is more or less what mailing lists do, except that they export things in mbox (or similar) formats. Do you see any problem in this approach?

[Graham Perrin]

Totally off-topic from Mailman and JavaScript:
10/10 for your avatar.

[Graham Perrin]

Franklin Schmidt <Nabble> wrote

We plan to simply prefix all emails with "[top-level-forum-name]".

Please, make prefixes optional. At the discretion of the owner of the forum.

Not for e-mails from all forums.

See for example <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-koch-subject-tags-considered>