Proper list server? (was Re: Automatic means for spinning down disks available?)

[L Goodwin]

Thanks, Chuck. Subscription Options has an option  "Which topic categories would you like to subscribe                 to?" that has "No topics defined", but I don't see any list of topic categories or a way to select them.

Chuck Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote: Hi, L--

On Apr 11, 2007, at 12:14 PM, L Goodwin wrote:
> 1) I get all email posted to freebsd-questions in my inbox  
> (actually, some end up in "bulk mail" folder). That's a lot of mail  
> to wade through. I'm trying to get a system up and running so I can  
> move on to the next task.  I suppose I could set up some email  
> filtering rules to limit what comes in.

You can follow the link to Mailman at the bottom of every list  
message, log in using your email addr (boink on the button to have it  
send you your password, if you don't remember it), and change your  
delivery preference to digest mode or even disable delivery entirely:

   http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/options/freebsd-questions

In addition, Mailman sets the List-ID header recommended by the RFCs,  
which means you can easily filter email from the list to another  
mailbox, via procmail or your mail client's native filtering.

> 2) To reply to an email, I have to copy/paste "freebsd- 
> questions at freebsd.org" into the "To" field. If I forget to do this,  
> my reply gets send to the sender only.
> See? I almost forgot to do it for this reply. :-}

Most mail clients have both a "reply" and "reply to all" capability;  
the local convention on the FreeBSD mailing lists is to use reply-to- 
all, perhaps unless you know that the other person is subscribed.

> One feature I like about (some) list servers is the ability to send  
> a private message to another member. This comes in handy when one  
> person is helping troubleshoot a problem, and you don't need  
> everybody on the list to get involved.

Nothing stops you from sending private email to someone else  
directly, but normally you want to CC: the list so that everyone can  
benefit from the advice or suggestions being made.  Taking a thread  
to private email tends to be done more when you need to discuss  
private config files which contain passwords or some such...

-- 
-Chuck



       
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