Re: [pgsql-www] Forums at postgresql.com.au - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 14:22, Elliot Chance <elliotchance@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 20/11/2010, at 11:52 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 12:26, Elliot Chance <elliotchance@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 20/11/2010, at 9:52 PM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 02:57, Elliot Chance <elliotchance@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 20/11/2010, at 3:58 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Isn't that a secondary use case, though?  It would be easy to solve this
>>>>>
>>>>> by providing a URL to the post in the forum that you can click; assuming
>>>>>
>>>>> the forum interface gives you the option to reply privately.
>>>>>
>>>>> That would pretty much make it impossible to use offline.
>>>>>
>>>>> That would be annoying, but I guess survivable. But how would that
>>>>> work for a user that hasn't signed up for the forum? How does it
>>>>> verify the sender?
>>>>>
>>>>> The forum uses the same confirmation as the mailing list where an email is
>>>>> sent to the address and they have to click on a link to activate their
>>>>> account - this very standard practice on forum software.
>>>>
>>>> Oh, I assumed that - you're missing my point.
>>>>
>>>> The point is this:
>>>> Assume John Doe posts something to the list. I am reading this, and
>>>> want to use "alvaros suggestion" for doing a direct response. So I
>>>> click the link that was in the email. *I* am not registrered in the
>>>> forums. How do I respond to his post in a safe way?
>>>
>>> You are registered in the forum already (it does this automatically), you simply reply on the mailing list as you
havealways done. If you feel the sudden urge to only reply via the forum then simply use the recover password to login
andreply from there. 
>>
>> I can't do that, since all email is sent from the same address. How
>> will the forum software know which person I was trying to respond to?
>
> One very annoying thing about Apple Mail with these lists is that when I hit reply if I don't change the To address
tothe mailing list or manually add the Cc then it doesn't even get sent to the mailing list. I wouldn't be surprised if
alot of my posts have disappeared like that. 

Use "Reply To All" when you want to send to the list. It's what
everybody else has been doing for ages :-) If you want to read up on
the bike-shedding that goes behind that preference, it is something
that comes up regularly - just search the archives.


> forums@postgresql.com.au is pointed to a black hole so that email disappears but the mailing list gets another copy.
Whenthe mailing list gets its copy it sends a copy to the forum (because the forum is just like a subscribed user), the
parserthen dissects the headers to find out where the post belongs. We already know this part works. 

So how does one respond to the user?


>>> Using nomail still requires you to confirm your email address (I know because i've tried it.) If there were a magic
valueyou could pass then it would defeat the purpose of having email confirmations and people would just write scripts
tocheat it - like I want to do. 
>>
>> Uh, no. Not when you're accessing the interface with the proper
>> password (one that has permissions to do admin actions on the list).
>> The code in that example does not require confirmation for the
>> subscriptions. It does, I think, send out the "welcome to the xyz
>> list" mail, but that should also be easily scriptable away.
>
> Theres no way I'm relying on the fact that every person that signs up to the forums will be informed enough to
realisethat the forum is more-or-less just a front for the mailing list. If I signed up to a forum and got and email
saying"welcome to the mailing list" I would think "Um, I didn't sign up to this" and unsubscribe. Now all my posts will
berejected by the mailing list and my posts will goto thin air without me ever knowing. 

Like I said, "that should also be easily scriptable away". Yes, it
will take more than zero seconds of work to look into how to do it.


>> You are still not understanding the problem. Since I *don't have the
>> users email address*, I can't send it the normal way. I have nowhere
>> to send it.
>
> Explained above, your not sending it to the person your sending it back to the mailing list. I know this works
becauseI've been testing it with my own address like a dummy mailing list. 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record.. I don't *WANT* to send
it to the list, in this scenario. I want to send it to the *person*.


>>> Forums and mailing lists have the same functionality they just do the same things different ways. If you want to
usethe mailing list you have to use it like a mailing list, if you want to use the forum then you have to use it like a
forum.
>>>
>>> If John Doe signs up to the forum he is expecting the forum to work like a forum. When his answer is posted to the
forumthread he will be notified. If in rare cases someone needs to send him a private message or email they can still
doso through those features provided inside the forum software. 
>>
>> So again, you're either not understanding the problem, or deliberately
>> avoiding it.
>>
>> John Doe posts something to the forum.
>> This gets mirrored to the mailinglist. From address is forum@postgresql.com.au
>> I read this
>> I want to respond to John Doe.
>
> If you want to respond you use the Reply button.

But that email goes to forum@postgresql.com.au. Which you said above
is a black hole. How do I get it to John?


>> There is no way for me to reach John Doe at this point. I can reach
>> the mailinglist. But I don't want to reach the mailinglist, I want to
>> reach John Done.
>
> If you want to personally reach John Doe you can use either the PM or email system in the forum - and you know how to
reachhim by his name. And perhaps a URL at the bottom of the email. If you just want to reply to him then i've explain
thatabove. 

But I'm not *on* the forum, I'm using the mailinglist.

The URL at the bottom is an acceptable solution, if you can make it
work transparently. I just don't understand how you can do that -
since I haven't signed up, I don't have a password.And you can't
encode it in the URL, because it goes into public archives... So how
would that URL *work*?


>> How do I access the forums private message feature, since I'm not
>> registered in the forum software?
>
> Again, you are registered, you have a password but you'l have to recover it the first time to be able to login to the
forumto send PMs/emails etc. 

So basically, I can't respond to posts made from the forum then,
because having to go through such a cycle is certainly broken enough
that I would never use it.

Based on that, I'm back to saying that the email has to be generated
from a valid email address, that can be used for return traffic.
Whether it's the users original address or a forum-specific one is a
different question, but a blackhole catch-all one just won't do.

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/