Integrate Steve Shipway's whitelist / moderation list add-on to the core ?

[dverdin]

Expected Behavior

In some lists, the basic send scenario works perfectly well, except for tow kind of users:
1- the bad-tempered people who tend to over-react and start flamewars by simply not taking car of what what they write. In that case, moderators would like to check what they say before accepting the messages diffusion.
2- the very important people (who can also be bad-tempered) for whom messages should always be accepted.

From an end user perspective, it would be nice to allow list owners to keep a list of email addresses that would be ether moderation-listed or white-listed. These list could be edited through the web interface.

Current Behavior

Though the scenario mechanism allows to create exception rules for such users, there are tow obstacles for its usage by list owners:
1- most of the time, scenario edition is not allowed by default in the Sympa server configuration,
2- the scenario structure may be hard to grasp for basic users.

Currently, Sympa allows to feed a blacklist, a list of users for which emails will be silently rejected anytime they post to a list.
There is no equivalent for moderation and white lists.

Possible Solution

Steve Shipway developed a while ago an add-ons the allows list owners to create list of addresses that would be systematically moderated or not moderated, depending on which list they're on.
It's basically an extension of the blacklist for different purposes.
It is based on Sympa basic mechanisms (scenario and custom actions).
It could be easily integrated into Sympa as is. however, we could also chose to duplicate the blacklist mechanism for code coherence.

Context

The feature was requested last week on the support list and I know at least one instance that has installed the plugin almost immediately after deployment.
Though I never had this request as a listmaster, it looks like it is not such a marginal usage.

[ldidry]

I use Steve’s plugin, I even improved it¹. I’m all for having this in
the core.

¹ sympa-community/sympa-contribs#13

[racke]

Yes I agree to move it to Sympa core.

[dpc22]

We are in the process of moving from a large Mailman install (8000+ active lists) to Sympa. I currently rely on Steve Shipway's whitelist patch, and would really appreciate it if this (or something equivalent) could be merged into core.

[dpc22]

I attach an updated version of Steve Shipway's whitelist plugin for Sympa 6.2.61b.2, anticipating the change from blacklist to blocklist #1111 in Sympa 6.2.62.

sympa.tar.gz

Changes:

1. blacklist.txt -> blocklist.txt
2. whitelist.txt -> allowlist.txt (maintaining backwards compatibility for any existing whitelist.txt files).
3. Present "blocklist / modlist / allowlist" as "Blocked Senders", "Moderated Senders" and "Allowed Senders".
4. Combine the three existing top level menu items into a single drop down on the list admin page:

Edit List Config  Users  Sender Lists  Manage Archives  Bounces  Logs
                               |
                               +-> Blocked Senders
                                   Moderated Senders
                                   Allowed Senders

"allowlist.txt / Allowed Senders" was an arbitrary choice of my part: I am open to other ideas.

"accept.txt / Accepted Senders" or "safe.txt / Safe Senders" would both be options, but "Allowed Senders" feels like the simplest to explain in a list of "Blocked Senders, Moderated Senders, Allowed Senders".

I would like to get this (or something equivalent) merged into Sympa core, so I don't have to keep fixing things up each time that a new version of Sympa arrives. Would a pull request help at all give that sympa-community/sympa-contribs#13 already exists?

Thank you.

[ikedas]

@dpc22, please see my comment on that repo.

Anyways we have to get permission of the author (Steve) to include his sources into Sympa --- naturally, getting permission of him to publish them under GPL (Not MIT License or so).

(Personally, I prefer to include it into sympa-contrib repo.)