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

[Gavin Baker]

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Bryan J. Smith wrote:
| 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.

This seems like a very practical solution, if the list maintainer(s) are
willing to implement it. This way, everybody gets the announcement, and
everybody only gets 1 copy. In the rare circumstance you want to receive
the discuss list but not event announcements, you unsubscribe from the
latter. (As long as the cron job only adds news subscribers, then you'll
only be added to the announce list the first time you join the discuss
list, so unsubscribe from announce once and you won't be re-added.)

- --
Gavin Baker
http://www.gavinbaker.com/
gavin at gavinbaker.com

migrating geese--
once there was so much
to say
~    Adele Kenny
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