Was: Shuttleworth (SABDFL) wants to shutdown this ubuntu.user list

[Rashkae]

On 09/30/2011 11:28 AM, Amedee Van Gasse wrote:
> On Thu, September 29, 2011 17:23, Rashkae wrote:
>
>> My idea is simply that mailman requires a function to 'lock a thread'.
>> When invoked by a moderator, any reply to any message in that discussion
>> thread gets rejected.  I see no reason why this would not be relatively
>> trivial to implement.  Sure, it would be easy for people to work around,
>> but only a few would, and those can be dealt with directly as
>> misbehaving agents.  I think that effectively disabling people's 'reply'
>> button to an unwanted discussion thread would solve 90% of the problems
>> with a list like this.
> Due to the nature of SMTP (SIMPLE mail transfer protocol), this would be
> (almost) impossible to implement.
>

Nonsense.  SMTP has nothing to do with in.  Mailman already has to scan 
and modify the headers of every message before re-submitting the message 
the mail server for distribution to the subcriber list.  Mailman also 
aready has the logic to organize mail messages into threads. (which it 
uses for the web based archives.)

The problem here, though, I admit, is that the threading is probably 
done after the message has been processed and "sent to the list".. 
whereas to implement my idea, that information would have to be figured 
out (via Subject header and or  In-Reply-To:  header, or whatever else 
is used to properly thread the messages) and compared to a blacklist of 
threads before being forwarded to the list proper.