RFE: provide option to email displayed message to email address
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
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GNU Mailman |
Triaged
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Wishlist
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Unassigned |
Bug Description
Very often, I will come across a new piece of information on a topic that has previously been discussed on the list. I will then search through my email accounts to try and find a copy of an email in that thread and reply to it, so that the message is correctly archived in the list manager etc.
Quite a lot of times, I will have deleted the relevant message. I then have to find it on the list, which is not a problem. Because I don't have a copy of the email to reply to, I can't reply to the thread and make it come up as part of the thread. At best, I can create a new email and add a permalink to the original thread. This would not, however, allow people browsing the old thread in the archives to see the newer information.
What would be ideal (and which I have seen implemented in other list managers, but cannot remember where) would be if, after finding a post in the archives, one could click a button and enter an email address to have that message (with all thread headers etc.) emailed to that email address again. Then the user could simply reply to the new email to have the threading properly maintained.
A second, related use-case is for people who aren't on the list and find a "hanging" thread in the archives. I often Google and find threads that end with something like "I will provide an update on this soon" with no following update. It would be nice, even if I wasn't on the mailing list, to have that one email sent to me so that I could reply and maintain threads.
This ability already exists. If the site is configured with ARCHIVER_ OBSCURES_ EMAILADDRS = Yes (the default), the poster's obscured email address is a mailto: link with the list posting address and appropriate Subject= and In-Reply-To= fragments. Of course, it is up to the MUA that handles the mailto: to understand these.
The other issue is that archive threading is by archive index period, so if the archive is indexed by month, a reply in January to a December post will be indexed in January and (in pipermail at least) can't be threaded to the December thread.
For your second use-case, you can use the same mailto: link to reply, and if your non-member post arrives in the same index period and is accepted, it will be threaded with the post you replied to. Is there some other reason why you would want an archived post to be mailed to you?
Archiving will be enhanced in MM3, and we will keep this request in mind.