[plug] Mailing List Confusion (was: Pi$$ed off)

[clare johnstone]

Thank you James for such a comprehensive reply.  .Here a careless
decision early in the life of Mailman has been set in stone, and
reinforced by the size to which Mailman has grown.
Although alternatives exist, ( I have been reading about them in
Wikipedia), none of them looks at all suitable. Pity.

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 10:18 AM, James Bromberger <james at rcpt.to> wrote:
> On 15/12/2011 8:51 AM, clare johnstone wrote:
>
> It was a bit confusing; Perhaps the error should refer to a
> "non-subscriber to the list" rather than "non-member".
>
> Indeed, this is the issue.
>
> This is Mailman's default wording and has nothing to do with membership of
> the association. PLUG's mailing lists are generally open for anyone to
> subscribe to and un-subscribe from at will. As many will be aware, the
> Mailman software PLUG uses is a self-service subscribe/un-subscribe, which
> can be accessed via email, or on the web at
> http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/. Further details on PLUG's
> mailing lists are at http://www.plug.org.au/resources/mailing-list.
>
> In this case Arie was subscribed to the mailing list in question from an old
> email address and posted to this list from a separate email address, which
> added to the confusion. Mailman cannot associate two separate email
> addresses as being the same person, so identifies the new address as a
> non-subscriber (non-member of the list). I have explained and offered (off
> list) to update the mailing list subscription details for him if he is
> unable to do so through the self-service interfaces offered, and I await
> Arie's acceptance of my offer (I don't generally believe we should change
> someone's subscriptions without their consent).
>
>
>
> Details for the interested
> While the template reply is customisable, it has a variable for the "reason"
> a message was held, and that appears this is not easily customisable (the
> template is used for many bounce options). It is this "reason" field that
> has caused the confusion:
>
> /usr/lib/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/Hold.py:    reason = _('Post by non-member
> to a members-only list')
>
> ... and I suspect that if we were to change this reason text it would either
> break some of mailman's internationalization lookups (not that we need them,
> so this is minor). It uses PO files, which use the original English text
> string as a key to lookup translations, such as this French translation from
> the fr/LC_MESSAGES/mailman.po file:
>
> #: Mailman/Handlers/Hold.py:61
> msgid "Post by non-member to a members-only list"
> msgstr "Envoi par un non-abonn<E9> sur une liste reserv<E9>e aux abonn<E9>s"
>
>
> There is no en/LC_MESSAGES/mailman.po to translate the English into...
> English in mailman's current set up (shame, as we could possibly do with an
> en_AU locale).
>
> However, the next security update or package upgrade would overwrite this
> change, as this message is not designed to be customised (clearly doing so
> could invalidate the lookup of translations).
>
>
>   James
> --
> Mobile: +61 422 166 708, Email: james_AT_rcpt.to
> PLUG President 2011: http://www.plug.org.au
>
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