Re: nobody/nogroup - ITP maildir-bulletin
>> Also with my bulletin system it's easy to unsend bulletins and to edit
>> bulletins. For example if you send a bulletin to 30000 users telling them
>> "the system will be down on Friday" then on Friday evening you can change it
>> to "the system was down on Friday" for the users who haven't yet read it.
>
>Sounds a good idea in general.
>
>Several comments:
>
>What happens if the user forwards all mail to another site and/or
>wants to filter incoming mail with procmail?
Currently there is no facility to cater for forwarding, but adding code to
do stat(".forward") when in the user's home directory isn't so hard, then it
could just run a regular mail process.
In the case that I am writing this for users are not expected or encouraged
to add their own procmail filters at all. Such things add to the support
burden. Also if they do filter out email then I expect that they don't want
to filter out messages about system down-time, assignment due dates, and the
other things that the bulletin system will be used for.
>Why is this better then newsgroups, the 'proper' way of passing
>bulletins (IMHO)? Don't tell me, I already know the answer: most people
>aren't aware of the existance of newsgroups. Perhaps some effort should
>be made to change this.
True. Also even if they are aware it's a seperate action to check, why make
people do two actions? Another issue is that email is regarded as an
essential service and it is expected to arrive reasonably reliably within a
day. News is not a reliable service and is generally run as such.
>Newgroups are idea for the task (IMHO), as you can read the messages at
>your leasure, don't have your incoming mailbox cluttered with unwanted
>messages (which the sender will always consider important, but maybe
>you disagree), and don't need to run slow mail filtering tasks, such as
>procmail.
For some tasks. However if your subject convenor wants to send out a mail
changing the assignment you have been set then you probably want it at the
top of your mailbox and won't regard it as clutter.
>(another point, with newsgroups, people are more likely to get upset if
>you post a message to the group group. For instance, as a Uni postgrad
>student, I often get my mailbox full of stuff that only applies to
>staff - occasionally somebody complains, but nothing changes).
My bulletin system is based around sending mail to a group or a set of
groups. If you are in multiple groups then you will only get the message
once. Also there is basic security based on sender address (yes I know it's
not difficult to forge) so users can only send mail to groups that they are
authorised for.
A less capable system has been working well at Utrecht university for some
time...
Also several POP servers have their own bulletin functionality which is even
less capable than the old Utrecht university system.
--
I'm in Utrecht. I'd like to meet any Linux users in the area, or any other
part of the Netherlands.
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