Postorius is indeed the front-end mailman3 provided for managing its
ideas of accounts, subscription, and if you are a list owner/moderator,
list configuration and moderation.
Datatracker currently is not integrated with postorius. It is planned to
modify mailman3 to use datatracker credentials and to use its APIs from
the datattracker to move managing list subscriptions into the
datatracker. Some earlier thinking/requirements towards this is captured
at
https://www.ietf.org/media/documents/Mail_Subscription_Mockup_2021-10-12.pdf.
RjS
On 8/24/25 5:11 AM, tom petch wrote:
Postorius is not a name that has any associations for me; vaguely classical, perhaps, not anything technical.
I recently wanted to amend my subscriptions to IETF lists, something I have done occasionally in my years of involvement. I went, naturally, to the Datatracker 'the day-to-day front-end to the IETF database for people who work on IETF standards'. I spent many hours over several days fishing around dead-ends, perhaps raising alarms by appearing to be a hacker. Eventually, I abandoned all previous knowledge and adopted the role of a newbie, going to the 'primary public face of the IETF .. at www.ietf.org' and that led me to Postorius and to my subscriptions. (Even then, I tripped up on the difference between 'Sign In', 'sign up' and 'Login' :-(. My time might have been expended contributing to the work of the IETF via mailing lists, but not on this occasion.
I see a gap here, that the 'day-to-day front-end to the IETF database' should have a pointer, some link, directing a user to Postorius when that is where a user can do what he needs to do, as opposed to all the things that he can do via the Datatracker. I see no such indication.
There is nothing wrong with the Datatracker as long as it is that that will do what I want to do; the problem comes when it is not. Hopefully I will remember that this time for when next I want to manage a subscription.
Tom Petch
