[HCoop-Discuss] Mailing list subscription policies

[Adam Chlipala]

Richard Darst wrote:
> Hello -discuss,
>
> At first, I wasn't going to comment since I figured it wouldn't come
> to anything, but this morning I was thinking that I should say
> something, at least to promote the spirit I'd rather hcoop be...
>
> (Moving to -discuss since this is more of a philosophical thing)
>
> On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 02:25:24PM -0400, Adam Chlipala wrote:
>
>   
>> - Our current policy is not to allow subscriptions from addresses that 
>> aren't in the form USER at hcoop.net.  Members should subscribe only 
>> through the portal, and you should reject direct subscription requests 
>> of any kind.  Sending from non-HCoop addresses is supported through 
>> whitelisting by moderators, and receipt of list mail at arbitrary 
>> addresses is supported by forwarding from HCoop accounts.  (The policy 
>> is open to discussion, but I still think it's the right way to do things.)
>>     
>
> I strongly feel that this isn't the right default policy...
>
> As an open, community, cooperative project, I think defaults should be
> open.  (of course, there could be specific exceptions, like the
> sysadmin list what was already discussed at some point in the past.)
> I think the question should be "why not" rather than "why".
>   

One non-trivial administrative issue is removing people from lists 
automatically when they leave the co-op, either explicitly or by 
ignoring us and refusing to pay. Our current destroy-user script just 
unsubscribes that user's @hcoop.net address from all lists. It would be 
a pain to figure out which subscriptions belong to that user.

In general, I'm willing to go along with whatever policy folks want, as 
long as it doesn't make more work for me. I'm currently the sole person 
creating and destroying accounts, so the subject of this thread does 
affect me.