[I sent this yesterday, but it seems to have gotten lost somewhere. Apologies if it ends up arriving twice.]
Morning,
Raul654 and I were having a discussion earlier about sending a daily featured article via email, similar to "word of the day" at m-w.com etc.
The easiest way to do this would be via a mailing list which users subscribe to; however, mailman's interface isn't really very obvious for someone who's just looking to sign up for something. So, it would be nice if something could be added which would handle the initial part of the subscription when the user enters their email address into a (simple) form, and they just have to reply to the mailman email to subscribe.
Is there any chance of something like this being done, or does anyone have any other suggestions on how to handle it?
Kate.
On Sat, Aug 21, 2004 at 09:35:23AM +0100, Kate wrote:
[I sent this yesterday, but it seems to have gotten lost somewhere. Apologies if it ends up arriving twice.]
Morning,
Raul654 and I were having a discussion earlier about sending a daily featured article via email, similar to "word of the day" at m-w.com etc.
The easiest way to do this would be via a mailing list which users subscribe to; however, mailman's interface isn't really very obvious for someone who's just looking to sign up for something. So, it would be nice if something could be added which would handle the initial part of the subscription when the user enters their email address into a (simple) form, and they just have to reply to the mailman email to subscribe.
Is there any chance of something like this being done, or does anyone have any other suggestions on how to handle it?
Call me an ignorant techie, but what is complicated in this form:
Subscribing to Wikitech-l
Subscribe to Wikitech-l by filling out the following form. You will be sent email requesting confirmation, to prevent others from gratuitously subscribing you. This is a private list, which means that the list of members is not available to non-members.
Your email address: [___________________] Your name (optional): [___________________]
You may enter a privacy password below. This provides only mild security, but should prevent others from messing with your subscription. Do not use a valuable password as it will occasionally be emailed back to you in cleartext.
Regards,
JeLuF
On Sun, 2004-08-22 at 11:41, Jens Frank wrote:
Call me an ignorant techie, but what is complicated in this form:
Subscribing to Wikitech-l
Subscribe to Wikitech-l by filling out the following form. You will be sent email requesting confirmation, to prevent others from gratuitously subscribing you. This is a private list, which means that the list of members is not available to non-members.
Your email address: [___________________] Your name (optional): [___________________]You may enter a privacy password below. This provides only mild security, but should prevent others from messing with your subscription. Do not use a valuable password as it will occasionally be emailed back to you in cleartext.
More like:
==Using Wikitech-l==
To post a message to all the list members, send email to wikitech-l@wikimedia.org.
You can subscribe to the list, or change your existing subscription, in the sections below.
==Subscribing to Wikitech-l==
Subscribe to Wikitech-l by filling out the following form. You will be sent email requesting confirmation, to prevent others from gratuitously subscribing you. This is a private list, which means that the list of members is not available to non- members.
Your email address: [_____________________] Your name (optional): [_____________________]
You may enter a privacy password below. This provides only mild security, but should prevent others from messing with your subscription. Do not use a valuable password as it will occasionally be emailed back to you in cleartext.
If you choose not to enter a password, one will be automatically generated for you, and it will be sent to you once you've confirmed your subscription. You can always request a mail-back of your password when you edit your personal options. Once a month, your password will be emailed to you as a reminder.
Pick a password: [_____________________] Reenter password to confirm: [_____________________]
Which language do you prefer to display your messages? [English (USA)________]
Would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest? [No_]
The "using the list" text is irrelevant - as subscribers wouldn't be able to post to it anyway. Is a typical end-user going to understand "cleartext"? Digest mail is irrelevant: there's only one mail per day anyway. Language is misleading at best, since the mail would only be in English anyway.
If this can all be removed or reworded on a per-list basis, that's fine: it's basically what I'm asking for.
(And yes, I really do think that form may confuse a typical end-user. Someone who's editing Wiki anyway, no - but this isn't aimed at only those people.)
Kate.
On Sun, Aug 22, 2004 at 01:14:24PM +0100, Kate wrote:
On Sun, 2004-08-22 at 11:41, Jens Frank wrote:
Call me an ignorant techie, but what is complicated in this form:
More like:
[skipped]
The "using the list" text is irrelevant - as subscribers wouldn't be able to post to it anyway. Is a typical end-user going to understand "cleartext"? Digest mail is irrelevant: there's only one mail per day anyway. Language is misleading at best, since the mail would only be in English anyway.
He should learn what cleartext means. It's important to teach people about security. Perhaps change the wording, to make it more obvious.
The other points are valid and I think I start to understand your issues.
If this can all be removed or reworded on a per-list basis, that's fine: it's basically what I'm asking for.
That should be possible. Something like http://mediawiki.mormo.org/mail.html perhaps?
Regards,
JeLuF
On Sat, 2004-21-08 at 09:35 +0100, Kate wrote:
The easiest way to do this would be via a mailing list which users subscribe to; however, mailman's interface isn't really very obvious for someone who's just looking to sign up for something. So, it would be nice if something could be added which would handle the initial part of the subscription when the user enters their email address into a (simple) form, and they just have to reply to the mailman email to subscribe.
Is there any chance of something like this being done, or does anyone have any other suggestions on how to handle it?
Why would you want to use a full blown MLM system? You wont need archiving, you wont need moderation, you wont need, well damm near anything beyond the most basic mail-to-a-lot-of-people abilities. It could be done with a very long alias :) Users have exactly one option: get the mail, or not. Make it a mediawiki preference.
On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 03:38, Jeff Warnica wrote:
On Sat, 2004-21-08 at 09:35 +0100, Kate wrote:
The easiest way to do this would be via a mailing list which users subscribe to
Why would you want to use a full blown MLM system?
Because it's designed to do exactly this, and it's already there with little effort required. What is the problem with using a mailing list?
You wont need archiving, you wont need moderation, you wont need, well damm near anything beyond the most basic mail-to-a-lot-of-people abilities.
It's been a while since I used mailman, but ISTR most of these features can be disabled.
It could be done with a very long alias :)
Yes, it could. I had considered that, but automatic subscription and management is likely to be a lot easier than doing it by hand.
Users have exactly one option: get the mail, or not. Make it a mediawiki preference.
Are you offering to write the code?
Kate (who just woke up, so excuse me for being a little short).
On Mon, 2004-23-08 at 12:34 +0100, Kate wrote:
On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 03:38, Jeff Warnica wrote:
On Sat, 2004-21-08 at 09:35 +0100, Kate wrote:
The easiest way to do this would be via a mailing list which users subscribe to
Why would you want to use a full blown MLM system?
Because it's designed to do exactly this, and it's already there with little effort required. What is the problem with using a mailing list?
I think that you have come up with a solution before you have correctly identified the problem. The question is not: What is the best mailing list system to use for feature-of-the-day? but: What is the best way to distribute feature-of-the-day by email? It may be that doing so with an (existing) MLM is the best way, but a full blown MLM is not the only way to distribute large volumes of mail.
It could be done with a very long alias :)
Yes, it could. I had considered that, but automatic subscription and management is likely to be a lot easier than doing it by hand.
Well, that depends on the MTA. I suspect that at least one MTA has the ability to use arbitrary SQL statements as the source for the "right hand side" of an alias. My MTA of choice's router is programmable by a sh clone; a one or two line wrapper around echo/mysql would do it. Moot point, an alias wouldn't be a good idea, I don't know how one would restrict random people from sending mail to it without the alias being a pipe to a program, in which case, just go with the program alone.
Users have exactly one option: get the mail, or not. Make it a mediawiki preference.
Are you offering to write the code?
I am, and I have. Adding a toggle pref was surprisingly easy. Since it is only about 5 new lines its not even worth while posting the diff.
On the other hand: It disturbs me that the prefs are in a BLOB (rather then say, a prefs table). This itself may be reason not to make this a preference, as the following would likely take a very long time:
select user.user_email from user where user.user_options like "% featuredbymail=1%";
I don't know how, or if, MySQL could optimize that. I believe it would have to do a comparison on every record in the user table.
Is there some regular daily processing that inspects every user record already?
Jeff Warnica wrote:
On the other hand: It disturbs me that the prefs are in a BLOB (rather then say, a prefs table).
Historical reasons.
This itself may be reason not to make this a preference, as the following would likely take a very long time:
select user.user_email from user where user.user_options like "% featuredbymail=1%";
I don't know how, or if, MySQL could optimize that. I believe it would have to do a comparison on every record in the user table.
Yes, it would have to check every record. The usual thing to do would be to change the schema of the user table, adding an indexed field for this particular preference.
Is there some regular daily processing that inspects every user record already?
No.
-- Tim Starling
On Mon, Aug 23, 2004 at 08:15:25PM -0300, Jeff Warnica wrote:
On Mon, 2004-23-08 at 12:34 +0100, Kate wrote:
On Mon, 2004-08-23 at 03:38, Jeff Warnica wrote:
On Sat, 2004-21-08 at 09:35 +0100, Kate wrote:
The easiest way to do this would be via a mailing list which users subscribe to
Why would you want to use a full blown MLM system?
Because it's designed to do exactly this, and it's already there with little effort required. What is the problem with using a mailing list?
I think that you have come up with a solution before you have correctly identified the problem. The question is not: What is the best mailing list system to use for feature-of-the-day? but: What is the best way to distribute feature-of-the-day by email? It may be that doing so with an (existing) MLM is the best way, but a full blown MLM is not the only way to distribute large volumes of mail.
The advantage of a MLM system is that there is an infrastructure to avoid someone subscribing under a wrong email address and that it already knows how to handle bounces.
Regards,
JeLuF
On Monday 23 August 2004 04:38, Jeff Warnica wrote:
could be done with a very long alias :) Users have exactly one option: get the mail, or not. Make it a mediawiki preference.
Why would only users have access to this?
Frankly, I am surprised that someone isn't offering this already, of course coupled with sleazy ads...
I don't believe this has been mentioned before, but PHPList would seem to be a good fit for this feature. It is a lightweight mail list program that requires PHP and MySql. It also features an RSS to email list function that might also be nice when combined w/ mediawiki's RSS feed features. Here is a link to a NewsForge article about PHPList:
http://software.newsforge.com/software/04/08/20/1538204.shtml?tid=79&tid...
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