[Balug-admin] I'd like to help

[Michael Paoli]

Excellent points!  I was thinking of posting a "to do"/wish list
for balug-admin-balug.org@lists.balug.org matters.  Since there's probably
at least a bit of overlap, let me (hopefully fairly briefly) mention
what I was thinking of:

To do / wish list items (not necessarily a complete list):
Mailing lists - get the "old(er)" publicly accessible list archives
back on-line.
Consistent URLs - seems the URLs of the archives have bounced about
a lot - they should be consistent, so older links work (directly or
via redirect), and all the archives for a given list (and its replacement,
and its replacement's replacement, ...) should be reasonably findable
under a common URL or URL scheme.  One of the things I noticed with
some Google searching and peeking at Google cache last time the list broke ...
apparently this recent episode isn't the first time the list has been broken
and set up
with a different list name and a different archive location (/URLs) ...
get it together (literally, at least).
The latest round of *replacement* list names are significantly longer
e-mail addresses (both local part and domain) - we should carefully
consider what they should be for the "permanent" e-mail addresses used
for each list, and carefully work to get to that goal (e.g.
balug-talk-balug.org@lists.balug.org
is rather long, not-so-user-friendly and relatively redundant e-mail address
for a BALUG talk list)
The list archives should be public unless "we", as a group, by consensus
(or at least plurality) decide they shouldn't be "public" (see also
Rick's fine comments :-))
I think most of my other key points (key content on main BALUG page,
BALUG calendar and its links/data, etc.) have been covered earlier
by myself and/or others so I'll try to avoid being redundant on those
points (they should also be findable in relatively recent archives).

Quoting Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>:

> I'd be glad to help with the mailing list and Web site.  I've been with
> BALUG since the beginning, and am an experienced Mailman listadmin and
> Linux sysadmin.
> 
> (One thing I'm bad at, so please don't ask:  Lining up speakers.)
> 
> I've taken out an account on the wiki, and joined this list and the new
> incarnation of balug-talk on the "lists.balug.org" host.  I'm reading
> docs on Postnuke.
> 
> Some concerns:
> 
> 1.  balug-talk's archive has always been publicly accessible.  Suddenly,
> the new one isn't.  Problems:  (1) It's not what the membership 
> has always wanted and expected, and (more primarily because) (2) a big
> part of the point of answering questions publicly is to advance the
> state of collective knowledge, e.g., by people finding the questions &
> answers via Web search.
> 
> My 2 cents:  This change really shoots BALUG in the foot.  Please un-do
> it ASAP.
> 
> 
> 2.  Host "lists.balug.org" doesn't accept mail to the postmaster account
> as required by RFC2821 and numerous other SMTP standards.
> (Specifically, it 550-rejects such mail with a "user unknown" message.)
> This ensures that mail from BALUG will be (needlessly and avoidably)
> discarded or rejected as probable spam, _and_ denies members of the
> public to use of a required administrative contact in case there's
> something wrong.
> 
> (If this is something "dreamhost" screws up globally and is not under
> Michael's control, please just say so.)
> 
> 
> 3.  http://lists.balug.org/private.cgi/balug-talk-balug.org/2005-March/
> has some mis-parsed entries in it, that appear to be fragments of prior
> years' mails to balug-talk.  This is almost certainly fixable, but will 
> require command-line access (to edit the mbox file) and ability to
> regenerate the Pipermail archive.
> 
> To see what I'm talking about, look at the 15 entries marked "No
> subject".
> 
> 
> 4  As always, CABAL appreciates the calendar link from the BALUG front
> page to CABAL events.  However, there's no "Sat, March 26 2005" CABAL 
> event.  Because of the desire to help out SVLUG and to avoid Easter
> weekend, CABAL's second meeting of the month was this _past_ Saturday,
> the 19th.
> 
> 
> 
> 5.  Attempting to bring up the BALUG calendar 
>
(http://www.balug.org/index.php?module=PostCalendar&func=view&tplview=&viewtype=day&Date=20050326&pc_username=&pc_category=&pc_topic=&print=)
> shows this at the top of the page:
> 
> Warning: Smarty error: problem creating directory
>
"modules/PostCalendar/pntemplates/cache/dad8523a2e18f1929871d45a6df8aac5/%%164/%%1643473877"
> in
>
/home/.bluebellblender/miamlh1/balug.org/modules/PostCalendar/pnincludes/Smarty/Smarty.class.php
> on line 589
> 
> 
> 6.  BALUG's "next meeting" information's out of date.  I'd fix it if I
> had access!  ;->