One-click mailing list subscriptions

Bug #376520 reported by Barry Warsaw
10
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Triaged
Low
Unassigned

Bug Description

There should be an AJAXified button on a team index page when that team has a mailing list, that when clicked will immediately both join you to the team and subscribe you to its mailing list. If the team is moderated, this button of course we just request those actions, which would be completed upon approval of the team owner.

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Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote :

Further, if the team is open and you are not a member, there should be a button under Mailing list section that essentially does what Join the team does. People may look there first and think "I want to be on the mailing list" but not think to do that through the team join page.

Both links can go to the +join page since that page has a checkbox to subscribe to the ml.

summary: - One-click mailing list subscriptions for closed teams
+ One-click mailing list subscriptions
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Curtis Hovey (sinzui) wrote :

I don't want to do this. If the team has a mailing list, the user should be subscribed. Users invented teams and lists to work on projects decades ago. We co-opted teams for access control; we were idiots. We need to fix access control, not make users think teams are anything more that a group of users with a common interest.

Changed in launchpad-registry:
importance: Undecided → Low
status: New → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote :

I'm not sure I understand. For open teams, there's already a +join button which let's you two-click to join the team and subscribe to the mailing list. For open teams, I'm suggesting that people may not realize that this link is there when they want to subscribe to a mailing list (not knowing they need to join the team first). I'll defer to Martin on whether it makes sense to add another link in that case.

I actually don't think the moderated team case is that much different, but the u/i needs a little bit different tweak in that case.

Martin Albisetti (beuno)
tags: added: ui
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Martin Albisetti (beuno) wrote :

So the plan is to make users auto-join mailing lists, and let them opt-out?

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Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote :

Only sort of. I don't plan to change the +join page, and I think it's mostly just u/i to emphasize the "subscribe to a mailing list" task over "join a team and then subscribe" task.

Revision history for this message
Curtis Hovey (sinzui) wrote : Re: [Bug 376520] Re: One-click mailing list subscriptions

On Thu, 2009-05-14 at 22:06 +0000, Martin Albisetti wrote:
> So the plan is to make users auto-join mailing lists, and let them opt-
> out?

This is not my plan. I strongly feel we are building a Frankenstein's
monster out of this. Mailing lists are broken because teams are broken.
Fix the teams so that the rules are obvious. I will not let this work be
scheduled until I have seen a good plan as to why we do not want to
model our object the way users want to use them

Revision history for this message
Karl Fogel (kfogel) wrote :

Curtis, is there an existing bug or blueprint somewhere describing the larger fix you're talking about?

For example, it's not clear to me if above you're saying that teams and lists *should* be synonymous but that teams simply shouldn't be used for access control, or if you're saying that teams and lists are two different things and also teams shouldn't be used for access control...

Revision history for this message
Karl Fogel (kfogel) wrote :

See mailing list thread about this: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/private/launchpad/2009-May/thread.html#41350

Note to public readers: sorry that that thread is internal to Canonical! As part of open-sourcing Launchpad (http://dev.launchpad.net/OpenSourcing), those sorts of discussions will be public in the very near future. Can't happen soon enough. In this case, there was no real reason the discussion had to be private, it's just that the forum where we happened to talk about it is private by default.

A summary of the thread would be basically what Curtis is saying above: the concept of "teams" is confusing because they're really about two different things -- access control, and community. The problem is that most people think of them as about community, and are confused when they use the same object to implement access control. It's not clear what the solution is yet.

Revision history for this message
Barry Warsaw (barry) wrote :

I've changed the bug description because while I fully agree we need to divorce them from teams and make them first class objects, there is a small-buck-big-bang UI improvement we can make sooner. By adding a button to do immediate in-place join+subscribe, we can easily make it much easier for people to participate in mailing lists. Let's do the simple thing first while we continue to design the ultimate interaction model.

description: updated
Changed in launchpad-registry:
importance: Low → High
tags: added: mailing-lists
Curtis Hovey (sinzui)
Changed in launchpad-registry:
importance: High → Low
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