Re: Postgres forums ... take 2 - Mailing list pgsql-general

I have made some major changes "beta2"

1. For now the forums have been set to read only, this is to prevent anyone posting a response (as it doesn't send
emailsback to the mailing list yet.) 

2. Added a bunch of new forums to match the mailing lists, also have subscribed to all main mailing list with the
followingmap: 

pgsql-admin => General > Server Administration & Maintenance
pgsql-advocacy => News > Advocacy & Media
pgsql-announce => News > News & Announcements
pgsql-bugs => Development > Bugs & Testing
pgsql-docs => Development > Documentation
pgsql-general => General > Other
pgsql-jdbc => Languages > Java
pgsql-jobs => Other > Commercial & Jobs
pgsql-novice => General > Newbie Section
pgsql-odbc => Languages > ODBC / Other
pgsql-performance => General > Performance & Benchmarking
pgsql-php => Languages > PHP
pgsql-sql => Languages > SQL
pgsql-students => Other > Education & Certification

This is visa-vers so forum topics posted on Languages > SQL will be posted to pgsql-sql, etc.

3. A rewrite of the mail to forums script so that it uses a MIME parser which handles messy emails, quotations and
multipartemails as it should now. 

4. The mail parser uses the correct "in-reply-to" to match up discussion threads rather than simply stripping the email
subject.

Extra thoughts;

It would not be practical for the forums to create a dummy mailing list email address per person or forum, however
theresneeds to be a robust way to make sure the topics/threads and posts match up with the threads and emails in the
mailinglist. The problem I see is that replies to the forum are not technically replies via email and so they will not
carrythe unique "in-reply-to" identifier. I believe this can be fixed by spoofing the in-reply-to from the forum, so
thateach forum reply will drop in the in-reply-to manually. I will do some testing on my own address before any
messagesare sent to the real mailing lists of course. 

Stripping bbcode, smilies, HTML or whatever is very simple, nothing to worry about there.

Since the php piping script had so many changes, I wiped the contents of the forum to run it all again. So any URLs you
hadthat point to specific thread IDs probably wont work any more, but as you can see the forums seems to be doing what
itshould: 
http://forums.postgresql.com.au

There needs to be more forum mapping from specific forums to mailing lists, for example "Languages > Perl" to the
closestmailing list which might be pgsql-general. However once the topic is created in a forum all the responses will
stayin that forum, so even though people reply on the pgsql-general mailing list the replies appear under Languages >
Perl.

The infrastructure exists to create as many forum mappings as needed, and I could add post processing. So for example
anemail to pgsql-general with the title "perl won't connect" will recognise "perl" and move it to the Languages > Perl. 


On 15/11/2010, at 9:42 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 11:08, Elliot Chance <elliotchance@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 15/11/2010, at 8:37 PM, Thom Brown wrote:
>>> I know this is a sensitive issue with some people, i've made sure no
>>> information is posted thats not already currently being indexed by google.
>>>
>>> The only maintenance I can see is that all new topics are pushed into the
>>> General > Other category as the script can't differentiate what category it
>>> should in fact belong to, once the topic is moved it will stay there. This
>>> shouldn't be a real problem as theres not many new topics being created on
>>> any given day.
>>
>> Elliot,
>>
>> That's actually some good work you've done there!  I didn't know phpBB
>> supported bidirectional mailing list support.
>>
>> It doesn't. I have a subscription address that is piped into a PHP script
>> that uses the phpBB3 APIs to do all you see.
>
> That sounds scary :-) Particularly given attachments and such. but if
> it works....
>
>
>> A few points though.  I think we'd need to disable smileys, bbcode, any form
>> of rich text formatting, flash or embedded images.  In short, plain text
>> only, which is the policy on the mailing list.  I think it would be more
>> useful if each forum directly corresponded to a mailing list too.  What I
>> mean is that if there was a forum on the site which didn't match to a
>> mailing list, only forum users could use it.
>>
>> If someone were to send a reply on the forum all the bbcode would be
>> stripped before emailing it to the mailing list to keep the mailing list
>> "pure." Is that what you mean?
>
> Personally, my thoughts are that if we want lists mirrored to a forum,
> they should look the same in both cases. Which means they should be
> stripped in the forums *as well*. but since I wouldn't be using the
> forums, my view should perhaps not be paid attention to around that.
> But there should *definitely* not be any bbcode going to the
> mailinglists.
>
>
>> Also, if someone registers on the forum, do they get a major domo
>> registration email?  And if so, would this be set to receive no emails upon
>> registration?  I'm not clear as to how this step would work because, at the
>> moment, mailing list subscribers have to subscribe on a list-by-list basis.
>> So registration to the forum site wouldn't necessarily mean they'd want to
>> join any particular mailing list.  Similarly, could they unregister easily?
>> And anyone who attempts to post to a mailing list they aren't subscribed to
>> requires moderation, so we don't wish to exacerbate this.
>>
>> No they are not registered on the mailing list, but they actually don't need
>> to be, let me explain:
>> 1. John Smith has a postgres related question and finds the forums, he signs
>> up and posts his question.
>> 2. His post is then emailed to the mailing list under a generic registered
>> address like "mailinglist@postgresql.com.au"
>
> This part I really don't like. It should at least be posted with some
> kind of uniquely identifiable pass-through address, if not the users
> own address (make that an option?). Like
> magnus-hagander-net@forums.whatever
>
>
>> 3. Bob House reads Johns question on the mailing list and simply sends an
>> email reply.
>> 4. The email reply is piped into the forum and matches the topic based on
>> the email subject (thats how it currently does it.)
>
> You really should be matching on the response headers rather than
> subject... Or at least both.
>
>
>
> --
>  Magnus Hagander
>  Me: http://www.hagander.net/
>  Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/