[Leaplist] Auto-subscribe announce membership -- WAS: Can kids volunteer for install fest

[Bryan J. Smith]

I belong to several mailman lists where I get 3-4 e-mails because
they blast all announcements to all lists, even when there is a
dedicated announcement list.  I also see the subjects get mangled in
responses, possibly cross-posts, etc...  Frankly, it bothers me none.
 But it seems to bother others, and then that thread takes a life of
its own.

I've run several mailman lists myself, as well as majordomo before
that.  One thing I found extremely easy to script into a daily
cronjob was a rebuild of an "announce" list's membership.  Now why
would I want to do that?  To auto-subscribe anyone on any list in the
group to the announcement list.

People could only join the designated announce list, as always.  But
if they joined any list, I ensured they were also subscribed to the
announce list.  I put this note on any subscription page for any
other list as well.  I _never_ got a single complaint.  A few others
would ask why they were subscribed, and often citing they never
subscribed, but even those didn't have a problem with it.  And a most
stated they wish other groups would do it, especially those who blast
announcements on non-announcement lists, especially when they were on
several.

That has always been my solution.  It's easy to do with majordomo and
mailman, as the membership lists are nearly all flat-files.  It can
be done with simple shell code, not even sed is necessary.  Piping
from all other list membership files into the announce list does the
job.  Majordomo and mailman are even smart enough to not send out
duplicates if listed more than once in the file, although I would
always build my list so there was only one entry per person.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith       Professional, Technical Annoyance
b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
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       Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution