Traditional mailing lists are presented as channels-like chats you cannot reply to. Because different messages in the same mailing list might have different subjects, DeltaChat does its best to figure out the name of the whole mailing list, but the headers are not always human-readable. (EDIT: my previous understanding was incorrect)
Would it be possible to allow the user to locally rename mailing list display names, like they would do for contact names?
(I am on ArcaneChat. Hopefully the same applies to vanilla DeltaChat, as well?)
Many mailing lists allow (usually, pre-moderated) posting, either by list subscribers only or by anyone. You send a message to the list, and the list moderator looks at it and decides whether to let it through.
The conventional way to label a message from a mailing list is to begin the subject line with the name of the list in square brackets. This makes it easy to filter all the list mails into a dedicated folder, etc..
I have no idea if these standards are in an RFC somewhere (or maybe just in GNU Mailman - Wikipedia, the software used for most FOSS lists) but I think they are worth following.
DeltaChat uses the content of the List-Id header as a display name for the chat. However, these identifiers are not necessarily human-readable, and almost never informative
it is more complex
ListId often have a human-readable part as List-ID: "Readable Name" <id.domain.com> - that is supported by Delta Chat as well
apart from that, Delta Chat does quite some effort in figuring out the name, supporting various formats and sheanigans. the mentioned approach is only the last resort
for a UI to set the mailinglist name, that will very likely not happen. it is not the gist of Delta Chat to have options on that level of detail, it would require follow-ups (sync, maintenance, support …), and the focus is meanwhile clearly encrypted messaging.
still, we would probably accept a PR that tweaks compute_mailinglist_name() to figure out the correct name from your mailinglist; however, for now, it is unlikely that we put effort in that area from the core team.
an maybe easier option is to set the correct name for the mailinglist itself, Delta Chat will pick it up by the methods mentioned above
Indeed, meaning that you do not send your message to the “channel-like chat you cannot reply to” (the DeltaChat UI does not have a text box for that). You open a different chat with the mailman address or what have you. However, “how do I post to a maling list?” was not part of the original question.
