Messages awaiting moderation are hidden from listmasters in web UI

[fusenuk]

Version

6.2.72

Installation method

RHEL yum package

Expected behavior

Previously listmasters were able to see the notification that messages were awaiting approval in the left admin menu and with the large box appearing saying "There are 1 message(s) awaiting moderation. (Review)" in the middle of the admin home page of a list

Actual behavior

Listmasters now see neither the left menu notification showing 'Messages (x)' under 'Moderate' or the large popup box showing the text "There are x message(s) awaiting moderation"

Steps to reproduce

View a list that you are not an owner or editor of, with an account that has listmaster access and also has a message awaiting moderation.

Additional information

List masters can still see the messages awaiting moderation by going directly to the moderation queue page e.g. https://lists.xx.ac.uk/sympa/modindex/xx-list-name-here

[fusenuk]

This commit was the change I believe - https://github.com/sympa-community/sympa/commit/fa356f42a915bfa6a0364fda3bd6dd356ba2fea7

It changes [% IF is_owner || is_editor %] to [% IF is_editor %]

but the _isowner check also included listmasters

[ikedas]

According to documentation:

Listmasters

Listmasters are in charge of the management of the mailing list service. Their duties:

(...)

• temporarily replace list owners when necessary; on the other hand, listmasters are not supposed to take the place of moderators.

The change was made to clarify that "listmasters are not supposed to take the place of moderators".

In order for a person to be involved in the moderation of a particular list, they should be added as a moderator of that list.

[ldidry]

@fusenuk You can copy list_menu.tt2 from default/web_tt2 directory to your etc/web_tt2 directory and edit it to get the old behavior back. Don’t edit default/web_tt2/list_menu.tt2 as it will be rewritten on next Sympa upgrade.

[fusenuk]

According to documentation:

Listmasters

Listmasters are in charge of the management of the mailing list service. Their duties: (...)

• temporarily replace list owners when necessary; on the other hand, listmasters are not supposed to take the place of moderators.

The change was made to clarify that "listmasters are not supposed to take the place of moderators".

In order for a person to be involved in the moderation of a particular list, they should be added as a moderator of that list.

This is interesting to see the official descriptions for each thanks. Although I feel there is some open interpretation for what the sentence you highlighted can mean.

I've been a listmaster for our Sympa instance for close to a decade and I often would use the ability to see if messages were pending moderation as a form of support to list owners who had issues. I would generally never be approving or rejecting those moderated messages.

So I wouldn't consider myself using the listmaster control to function as an editor, I was still functioning as a listmaster using the 'full admin' access to give me a complete picture of the exact state of all parts of Sympa.

[ikedas]

The highlighting is in the original text, so it is not relevant to the discussion here.

There is certainly a open interpretation of "the 'full admin' access." In fact, it was not really "full" access because listmasters do not receive message holding notifications.

Now, to achieve the same thing, the listmaster needs to be added as a moderator of a particular list and then set the reception mode to nomail. However this procedure could be automated by using the list creation templates or similar.

[sebix]

Why is a menu item hidden from a listmaster? I fully agree that it is not the admins' task to do the list moderation, but why is it necessary for the admins to work around the issue? In the end, this change causes more confusion and work for the list masters. We can't even see the count of held messages anymore.

[ikedas]

Hi @sebix , see discussion above.