[AktiviX-discuss] columbia list - mailman topics - 3000 subscribers ?

[Alan]

Hello Aktivix

My group from Colombia have now returned and I have shown them the admin 
interface for the Mailman list you setup for us. They are very, very 
happy with it, and they wanted me to thank you for your all help with it.

Like Ana suggested a while back, we would have two lists. A list that 
needs to be private and a list that is more generally public.

We'd definitely like to use the topics feature offered.
We are splitting the subscribers into 6 geographic regions (London, 
Bristol, Oxford, Liverpool, Scotland, Manchester) with the possibility 
of adding more later. We then have a topic for Urgent Action alerts, a 
topic for whether they are a member of the campaign, and a topic for 
whether they are subscriber of the newspaper we produce.

We have some questions about the list if that's okay.

Is it possible to have a multiple entry field on a single topic rather 
than a tick on or off? For instance for the geographic topic, a region 
is selected rather than having seperate topics for each region? The 
reason I ask, is that our Outlook address book has the geographic 
regions all under one user field, and was thinking if there was an easy 
way to transfer this to Mailman.

We would like to have a front end interface for subscribers to add 
themselves to the mailing list, and opt into the topics. Some topics 
subscriptions we would want moderate first, like Subscriber and Campaign 
member. Is this possible?

Is it possible to have an extra entry field in the user's record? Like a 
text entry box for further information about themselves.
We are thinking that with the subscriber topic, they need to subscribe 
to the newspaper, so we would want them adding their address to their 
record (and obviously not visible to public).

Also, I need to check, is it possible to send one message to two topics 
at once? Like London region and Member? Or can you only send to one 
topic at once?

How does Mailman handle bounce backs? Can it be set to remove entries 
that are incorrect emails?

If anyone can help with the transfer of our subscriber contacts, I've 
exported their Outlook address book as a csv file, and can send a small 
sample to you for looking at how we can transfer the data over to 
Mailman. CSV is has colomns for name, email, address. Then 3 user 
defined fields, one for location, one for whether they are a member, one 
for whether they are newspaper subscriber.

Okay lots of questions sorry, but thanks again for your help.

Alan