X-Message-Number: 3507 From: whscad1!kqb (Kevin Q Brown +1 201 386 7344) Subject: CRYONICS: Administrivia: Re: CryoNet Options David Stodolsky said: >> (1) We can have a default CryoNet digest list that filters out >> messages with special keywords (such as "POLITICS") in the >> Subject line. ... > > This is an impoverishment of service compared to the old system. It > would probably mean "POLITICS" posts would come over on the main list. > Keep the old setup until the move is finished. David, Thanks for your message. While I disagree with your conclusion (that my proposal was for an impoverishment of service) I won't waste space defending my original proposal here because your message prompted me to think of an even better (!) proposal. To recap, I suggested creating up to three mailing lists: Filtered Digest (default) - cryonet Unfiltered Digest - cryonet-xxx <- need a better name Unfiltered and Undigested - cryonet-yyy <- need a better name Also, I was assuming that all postings would go to one email address: and those postings would be distributed among the three mailing lists. Under that assumption some keywords (or other clues) would be needed to tell the software which mailing lists would receive the posted messages. (That is similar to the current situation where all messages go to the same address "" and the keyword "POLITICS" tells the software to send the message to the politics list rather than the default mailing list.) If, however, we use three posting addresses for the three mailing lists, people posting messages will not need to put any special keywords or clues in their messages. The posting addresses for this entirely clue-less :-) system will be: Filtered Digest (default) - Unfiltered Digest - Unfiltered and Undigested - To ensure that everyone receives all the messages they want, though, some behind-the-scenes programming will be needed to do inter-mailing-list forwarding as follows: ----- cryonet ----- | | v v cryonet-xxx <-----> cryonet-yyy This forwarding will ensure that the two unfiltered lists (cryonet-xxx and cryonet-yyy) will receive all the messages, but that the other (politics, etc.) messages going to cryonet-xxx and cryonet-yyy will not be forwarded back to the default cryonet list. Of course, you could rightfully claim that I've only shifted the problem from requiring people to put the correct keyword (or other clue) in the messages to requiring people to send their messages to the correct email address. That's true! But if we choose the names of the other mailing lists (cryonet-xxx and cryonet-yyy) well, that still will be a substantial improvement. One more detail. The From: or Reply-To: field in the email header sent by the posting software probably should be the same for all three mailing lists and should _not_ be one of the three posting addresses. This means that using a simple "reply" command in your mailer will not be sufficient to post a message. You will have to choose explicitly where you want to post your message. Kevin Q. Brown PS: People familiar with how Majordomo normally works may wonder how I plan to make it go through hoops like I suggested above. Fortunately, the behind-the-scenes programming will not be much different from what I am doing already. In order to make the digest and other features of CryoNet work the way I wanted for the first () mailing list, I had to tell Majordomo that it was a moderated list and write software to catch all the "BOUNCE ... Approval" messages issued by Majordomo. Once a night a cron job automatically digests all those messages and posts them, this time with the approval password so that the messages go to the mailing list instead of getting bounced back by Majordomo again. Thus, the automation turns a "moderated" mailing list into an unmoderated mailing list. Since my software has already taken control of the disposition of the incoming messages, making it forward those messages among three different mailing lists as I suggested above should not be difficult. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3507