Mailman topics (was: Request: Take Off-Topic Off-List)

[Ben Scott]

On 5/25/07, Paul Lussier <p.lussier at comcast.net> wrote:
> Can mailman topics be used without cluttering up the Subject line?

  I've never used it, but I don't think they work by explicitly
inserting anything into the subject line.  Posters can put things into
the subject line to trigger the Topics feature, but that's not the
only way to make it work, and the things can be as unobtrusive as
"OT:".

  (Note that my explaining of how I think Mailman Topics work is not
an endorsement of their use on this list.  (Note that my explaining
the previous is not an objection to their use on this list.))

  From a previous message I wrote on this subject ("I've already
explained this once, but repetition is the very soul of the net."):

  I've never used it, but my understanding from the web UI help is as follows:

 The list admin defines the Topics.  Each Topic gets one or more
regular expressions associated with it.  Mailman scans every submitted
message to categorize it into a Topic.  It looks at the "Subject" and
"Keywords" headers.  It also looks at the first few lines (5 by
default) of every message body for anything that looks like those
headers.

 List subscribers may choose to only receive messages in particular
Topics.  I'm not sure, but it sounds like if you do not pick any
Topics, you get all list mail.  As soon as you pick a Topic, you only
get mail matching your selected Topics.

 It isn't clear to me, but it sounds like if a message is not matched
into a Topic, only the "send me everything" users will get the
message.  Likewise, I dunno if a single message can be matched into
more than one Topic.

-- Ben