Over the past 8 months, I've received many requests for a version of
InfoMagnet for mailing list managers.
 
At the time, I thought it would be a good deal of work for a small group of
users.  However, it recently dawned on me that a good amount of the work of
mailing list managers is the sort of thing users do:
 
Signing off a list
Setting sub to digest
Occasionally doing a search or subscribing
 
Obviously, these are all functions people could for themselves.  In fact, a
couple of them even use InfoMagnet to do this kind of thing.
 
Now: what if there were a list manager version of InfoMagnet which kept
track of who was on your list, and let you (the list manager) quickly take
over that user's identity and do a few things on their behalf?
 
Let me raise a few issues:
 
* There would be no way to control whether the user of "InfoMagnet LM" (list
manager) actually is a list manager (though I could control who gets the
software).  If they were a list manager, it would be hard to control that
person from mucking with other lists.  Unless, of course, I customize each
copy for the lists that person is allowed to use--or create serial #s that
we give out for each list they are allowed to manage.
 
* How would users react to having things done on their behalf?  I could have
InfoMagnet LM send the user a message saying "Jane Listmanager used your
email address to set your subscription to digests" or something... that
might help.
 
Because InfoMagnet is activated by a serial #, I could also have the serial
# and info about that serial #s usage sent to
[log in to unmask] to try and track InfoMagnet LM
abuse.  But then...that raises sticky privacy issues for list managers.
 
Now, how about a window with a list of users, and buttons such as
"subscribe, signoff, search, settings" for that window.  You could
control-click on a dozen users and act on them all at once.
 
We could even change InfoMagnet LM so that it only acts on lists we have
allowed you to use.  The search window would no longer search for a list,
but search for users (handy from tracking bounces)  But this might get
complicated...
 
BTW - the output from "review" would have to be periodically pasted into the
software to make this work.
 
What do people think?  Would this be useful?  A waste of time?
 
John
 
 
 
 
John Buckman - [log in to unmask] - (301) 718-7840
Walter Shelby Group Ltd. - Internet Software Publishers
http://www.shelby.com/pub/shelby/ - ftp://ftp.shelby.com/pub/wsg