I would like to propose the addition of an "anonymous user" option within listhandler.

My specific situation/configuration:

  • We have several MAILMAN mailing lists which are moderated and which require
    administrative approval to join
  • We have a Civicspace website set up and forums which correspond to the mailman lists.
  • Only a small subset of the Mailman subscribers have userids on the Civicspace site.

Want we want:

  • Users on the MAILMAN list post and will have their postings automagically submitted to the
    correct Civicspace forum, thus effectively turning the CS forum into an archive within CS.
  • Users of the Civicspace forums can post and have their entries sent to the Mailman list.

What currently happens:

  • When a Mailman subscriber sends to the Mailman mailing list, it gets propagated to the CS website.
  • If the subscriber does NOT have a valid CS userid, it is automagically created; the admin
    can specify whether the newly-created user will be blocked (meaning whether the user
    is allowed to login and post).

    If the user IS blocked, then his/her posting will not be
    done to the indicated forum.

My / our proposed solution: create a new option in listhandler of "anonymous user", i.e., a
valid CS userid which will post the EMAIL item as outlined above.

This has several benefits:

  1. A new CS user is not automatically created (in our case, beneficial, as we have > 500 on
    one of our mailing list and most of them won't even WANT a CS userid).
  2. We can set the privs of the anonymous user to only post to certain forums.

I have implemented this in a modified listhandler module; it appears to work just fine as follows:

  • A listhandler option has been added ("listhandler_anonauthor"). A text area has been defined on the configuration screen and the value stored as per other values in the configuration process.
  • If an anonymous posting (from the Mailman user) comes in:
    • If the anonauthor has been specified in the listhandler configuration AND the user is valid,
      then the posting is performed under that userid.
    • if the anonyauthor field has been left blank then the usual listhandler processing takes place.

As a new participant in this process (module submission) where should I post my version of the module?

Charlie (cyberchucktx)

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#3 listhandler.module.hook_author.patch1.29 KBjmcclelland

Comments

zeroj’s picture

zeroj commented

sounds interesting. Ideally, you should attach a patch to this issue. If you are new to generating patch files, you can attach the entire file.

philipnet’s picture

philipnet commented
Assigned: Unassigned » philipnet
jmcclelland’s picture

jmcclelland commented
StatusFileSize
new listhandler.module.hook_author.patch1.29 KB

Attached is a more abstract solution (tested against drupal 5). It adds a hook allowing other module developers to handle authors that don't exist or don't have access to post.

shark’s picture

shark commented

So to clarify, the desired effect is that emails from the mailing list are scanned, and then:

If a website user is found whose email address matches that of the sender of the message:
  set author of node to be this user,
otherwise (no user found):
  set author of node to be an 'anonymous user' (the anonauthor user specified in the listhandler configuration)

This seems like a nice solution to the problem where many mailing list users won't be signing up on the website. Subscribing.

philipnet’s picture

philipnet commented
Status: Active » Needs review

Is the patch in #3 going to be useful for anyone?

shark’s picture

shark commented

I think the patch in comment #3 would be fine if it also provided a Listhandler submodule which used the hook_listhandler_author() to provide the functionality described in the issue posting and in comment #4.

On it's own, I can't think of how the patch in #3 would be useful.

saml’s picture

saml commented

subscribe