Mailman Betreuer Dokumentation

Hier soll eine Anleitung für Mailinglisten-Betreuer entstehen. Erstmal können wir Tips hier auf der Seite sammeln und dann Unterseiten anlegen. Dabei die Seiten immer mit "Mailman" anfangen lassen, damit man sie leicht identifizieren kann.

http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-admin.txt:

GNU Mailman - List Administration Manual

  Barry A. Warsaw

  Release 2.1
  September 12, 2007

  Front Matter

  Abstract:

  This document describes the list administrator's interface for GNU
  Mailman 2.1. It contains information a list owner would need to
  configure their list, either through the web interface or through
  email. It also covers the moderator's interface for approving held
  messages and subscription notices, and the web interface for creating
  new mailing lists. In general, it does not cover the command line
  interface to Mailman, installing Mailman, or interacting with Mailman
  from the point of view of the user. That information is covered in
  other manuals.

Contents

          + 1 Introduction to GNU Mailman
              o 1.1 A List's Email Addresses
              o 1.2 Administrative Roles
              o 1.3 A List's Web Pages
              o 1.4 Basic Architectural Overview
         + 2 The List Configuration Pages
              o 2.1 The General Options Category
              o 2.2 The Passwords Category
              o 2.3 The Language Options Category
              o 2.4 The Membership Management Category
              o 2.5 The Non-digest Options Category
              o 2.6 The Digest Options Category
              o 2.7 The Privacy Options Category
              o 2.8 The Bounce Processing Category
              o 2.9 The Archiving Options Category
              o 2.10 The Mail/News Gateway Category
              o 2.11 The Auto-responder Category
              o 2.12 The Content Filtering Category
              o 2.13 The Topics Category
         + 3 Membership Management
         + 4 Tending to Pending Moderator Requests
         + 5 Editing the Public HTML Pages
         + 6 Deleting the Mailing List
         + 1 This is an Appendix

                        1 Introduction to GNU Mailman

  GNU Mailman is software that lets you manage electronic mailing lists.
  It supports a wide range of mailing list types, such as general
  discussion lists and announce-only lists. Mailman has extensive
  features for controlling the privacy of your lists, distributing your
  list as personalized postings or digests, gatewaying postings to and
  from Usenet, and providing automatic bounce detection. Mailman provides
  a built-in archiver, multiple natural languages, as well as advanced
  content and topic filtering.

  Mailman provides several interfaces to its functionality. Most list
  administrators will primarily use the web interface to customize their
  lists. There is also a limited email command interface to the
  administrative functions, as well as a command line interface if you
  have shell access on the Mailman server. This document does not cover
  the command line interface; see the GNU Mailman site administrator's
  manual for more details.

1.1 A List's Email Addresses

  Every mailing list has a set of email addresses that messages can be
  sent to. There's always one address for posting messages to the list,
  one address that bounces will be sent to, and addresses for processing
  email commands. For example, for a mailing list called
  mylist@example.com, you'd find these addresses:

    * mylist@example.com - this is the email address people should use
      for new postings to the list.
    * mylist-join@example.com - by sending a message to this address, a
      new member can request subscription to the list. Both the Subject:
      header and body of such a message are ignored. Note that
      mylist-subscribe@example.com is an alias for the -join address.
    * mylist-leave@example.com - by sending a message to this address, a
      member can request unsubscription from the list. As with the -join
      address, the Subject: header and body of the message is ignored.
      Note that mylist-unsubscribe@example.com is an alias for the -leave
      address.
    * mylist-owner@example.com - This address reaches the list owner and
      list moderators directly.
    * mylist-request@example.com - This address reaches a mail robot
      which processes email commands that can be used to set member
      subscription options, as well as process other commands.
    * mylist-bounces@example.com - This address receives bounces from
      members who's addresses have become either temporarily or
      permanently inactive. The -bounces address is also a mail robot
      that processes bounces and automatically disables or removes
      members as configured in the bounce processing settings. Any bounce
      messages that are either unrecognized, or do not seem to contain
      member addresses, are forwarded to the list administrators.
    * mylist-confirm@example.com - This address is another email robot,
      which processes confirmation messages for subscription and
      unsubscription requests.

  There's also an -admin address which also reaches the list
  administrators, but this address only exists for compatibility with
  older versions of Mailman.

1.2 Administrative Roles

  There are two primary administrative roles for each mailing list, a
  list owner and a list moderator. A list owner is allowed to change
  various settings of the list, such as the privacy and archiving
  policies, the content filtering settings, etc. The list owner is also
  allowed to subscribe or invite members, unsubscribe members, and change
  any member's subscription options.

  The list moderator on the other hand, is only allowed to approve or
  reject postings and subscription requests. The list moderator can also
  do things like clear a member's moderation flag, or add an address to a
  list of approved non-member posters.

  Normally, the list owner and list moderator are the same person. In
  fact, the list owner can always do all the tasks a list moderator can
  do. Access to both the owner's configuration pages, and the moderation
  pages are protected by the same password. However, if the list owner
  wants to delegate posting and subscription approval authority to other
  people, a separate list moderator password can be set, giving
  moderators access to the approval pages, but not the configuration
  pages. In this setup, list owners can still moderate the list, of
  course.

  In the sections that follow, we'll often use the terms list owner and
  list administrator interchangably, meaning both roles. When necessary,
  we'll distinguish the list moderator explicitly.

1.3 A List's Web Pages

  Every mailing list is also accessible by a number of web pages. Note
  that the exact urls is configurable by the site administrator, so they
  may be different than what's described below. We'll describe the most
  common default configuration, but check with your site administrator or
  hosting service for details.

  Mailman provides a set of web pages that list members use to get
  information about the list, or manage their membership options. There
  are also list archive pages, for browsing an online web-based archive
  of the list traffic. These are described in more detail in the GNU
  Mailman user's manual.

  Mailman also provides a set of pages for configuring an individual
  list, as well as a set of pages for disposing of posting and
  subscription requests.

  For a mailing list called mylist hosted at the domain
  lists.example.com, you would typically access the administrative pages
  by going to http://lists.example.com/mailman/admin/mylist. The first
  time you visit this page, you will be presented with a login page,
  asking for the list owner's password. When you enter the password,
  Mailman will store a session cookie in your browser, so you don't have
  to re-authenticate for every action you want to take. This cookie is
  stored only until you exit your browser.

  To access the administrative requests page, you'd visit
  http://lists.example.com/mailman/admindb/mylist (note the admindb url
  as opposed to the admin url). Again, the first time you visit this
  page, you'll be presented with a login page, on which you can enter
  either the list moderator password or the list owner password. Again, a
  session cookie is dropped in your browser. Note also that if you've
  previously logged in as the list owner, you do not need to re-login to
  access the administrative requests page.

1.4 Basic Architectural Overview

  This section will outline the basic architecture of GNU Mailman, such
  as how messages are processed by the sytem. Without going into lots of
  detail, this information will help you understand how the configuration
  options control Mailman's functionality.

  When mail enters the system from your mail server, it is dropped into
  one of several Mailman queues depending on the address the message was
  sent to. For example, if your system has a mailing list named mylist
  and your domain is example.com, people can post messages to your list
  by sending them to mylist@example.com. These messages will be dropped
  into the incoming queue, which is also colloquially called the
  moderate-and-munge queue. The incoming queue is where most of the
  approval process occurs, and it's also where the message is prepared
  for sending out to the list membership.

  There are separate queues for the built-in archiver, the bounce
  processor, the email command processor, as well as the outgoing email
  and news queues. There's also a queue for messages generated by the
  Mailman system. Each of these queues typically has one queue runner (or
  ``qrunner) that processes messages in the queue. The qrunners are
  idle when there are no messages to process.

  Every message in the queues are represented by two files, a message
  file and a metadata file. Both of these files share the same base name,
  which is a combination of a unique hash and the Unix time that the
  message was received. The metadata file has a suffix of .db and the
  message file has a suffix of either .msg if stored in plain text, or
  .pck if stored in a more efficient internal representation^1.

  As a message moves through the incoming queue, it performs various
  checks on the message, such as whether it matches one of the moderation
  criteria, or contains disallowed MIME types. Once a message is approved
  for sending to the list membership, the message is prepared for sending
  by deleting, adding, or changing message headers, adding footers, etc.
  Messages in the incoming queue may also be stored for appending to
  digests.

                        2 The List Configuration Pages

  After logging into the list configuration pages, you'll see the
  configuration options for the list, grouped in categories. All the
  administrative pages have some common elements. In the upper section,
  you'll see two columns labeled ``Configuration Categories. Some
  categories have sub-categories which are only visible when you click on
  the category link. The first page you see after logging in will be the
  ``General Options category. The specific option settings for each
  category are described below.

  On the right side of the top section, you'll see a column labeled
  ``Other Administrative Activities. Here you'll find some other things
  you can do to your list, as well as convenient links to the list
  information page and the list archives. Note the big ``Logout link;
  use this if you're finished configuring your list and don't want to
  leave the session cookie active in your browser.

  Below this common header, you'll find a list of this category's
  configuration variables, arranged in two columns. In the left column is
  a brief description of the option, which also contains a ``details
  link. For many of the variables, more details are available describing
  the semantics of the various available settings, or information on the
  interaction between this setting and other list options. Clicking on
  the details link brings up a page which contains only the information
  for that option, as well as a button for submitting your setting, and a
  link back to the category page.

  On the right side of the two-column section, you'll see the variable's
  current value. Some variables may present a limited set of values, via
  radio button or check box arrays. Other variables may present text
  entry boxes of one or multiple lines. Most variables control settings
  for the operation of the list, but others perform immediate actions
  (these are clearly labeled).

  At the bottom of the page, you'll find a ``Submit button and a footer
  with some more useful links and a few logos. Hitting the submit button
  commits your list settings, after they've been validated. Any invalid
  values will be ignored and an error message will be displayed at the
  top of the resulting page. The results page will always be the category
  page that you submitted.

2.1 The General Options Category

  The General Options category is where you can set a variety of
  variables that affect basic behavior and public information. In the
  descriptions that follow, the variable name is given first, along with
  an overview and a description of what that variable controls.

 2.1.1 General list personality

  These variables, grouped under the general list personality section,
  control some public information about the mailing list.

  real_name
         Every mailing list has both a posting name and a real name. The
         posting name shows up in urls and in email addresses, e.g. the
         mylist in mylist@example.com. The posting name is always
         presented in lower case, with alphanumeric characters and no
         spaces. The list's real name is used in some public information
         and email responses, such as in the general list overview. The
         real name can differ from the posting name by case only. For
         example, if the posting name is mylist, the real name can be
         Posting.

  owner
         This variable contains a list of email addresses, one address
         per line, of the list owners. These addresses are used whenever
         the list owners need to be contacted, either by the system or by
         end users. Often, these addresses are used in combination with
         the moderator addresses (see below).

  moderator
         This variable contains a list of email addresses, one address
         per line, of the list moderators. These addresses are often used
         in combination with the owner addresses. For example, when you
         email mylist-owner@example.com, both the owner and moderator
         addresses will receive a copy of the message.

  description
         In the general list overview page, which shows you every
         available mailing list, each list is displayed with a short
         description. The contents of this variable is that description.
         Note that in emails from the mailing list, this description is
         also used in the comment section of the To: address. This text
         should be relatively short and no longer than one line.

  info
         This variable contains a longer description of the mailing list.
         It is included at the top of the list's information page, and it
         can contain HTML. However, blank lines will be automatically
         converted into paragraph breaks. Preview your HTML though,
         because unclosed or invalid HTML can prevent display of parts of
         the list information page.

  subject_prefix
         This is a string that will be prepended to the Subject: header
         of any message posted to the list. For example, if a message is
         posted to the list with a Subject: like:

   Subject: This is a message

         and the subject_prefix is [My List] (note the trailing space!),
         then the message will be received like so:

   Subject: [My List] This is a message

         If you leave subject_prefix empty, no prefix will be added to
         the Subject:. Mailman is careful not to add a prefix when the
         header already has one, as is the case in replies for example.
         The prefix can also contain characters in the list's preferred
         language. In this case, because of vagarities of the email
         standards, you may or may not want to add a trailing space.

  anonymous_list
         This variable allows you to turn on some simple anonymizing
         features of Mailman. When you set this option to Yes, Mailman
         will remove or replace the From:, Sender:, and Reply-To: fields
         of any message posted to the list.

         Note that this option is simply an aid for anonymization, it
         doesn't guarantee it. For example, a poster's identity could be
         evident in their signature, or in other mail headers, or even in
         the style of the content of the message. There's little Mailman
         can do about this kind of identity leakage.

 2.1.2 Reply-To header munging

  This section controls what happens to the Reply-To: headers of messages
  posted through your list.

  Beware! Reply-To: munging is considered a religious issue and the
  policies you set here can ignite some of the most heated off-topic
  flame wars on your mailing lists. We'll try to stay as agnostic as
  possible, but our biases may still peak through.

  Reply-To: is a header that is commonly used to redirect replies to
  messages. Exactly what happens when your uses reply to such a message
  depends on the mail readers your users use, and what functions they
  provide. Usually, there is both a ``reply to sender button and a
  ``reply to all button. If people use these buttons correctly, you
  will probably never need to munge Reply-To:, so the default values
  should be fine.

  Since an informed decision is always best, here are links to two
  articles that discuss the opposing viewpoints in great detail:

    * Reply-To Munging Considered Harmful
    * Reply-To Munging Considered Useful

  The three options in this section work together to provide enough
  flexibility to do whatever Reply-To: munging you might (misguidingly :)
  feel you need to do.

  first_strip_reply_to
         This variable controls whether any Reply-To: header already
         present in the posted message should get removed before any
         other munging occurs. Stripping this header will be done
         regardless of whether or not Mailman will add its own Reply-To:
         header to the message.

         If this option is set to No, then any existing Reply-To: header
         will be retained in the posted message. If Mailman adds its own
         header, it will contain addresses which are the union of the
         original header and the Mailman added addresses. The mail
         standards specify that a message may only have one Reply-To:
         header, but that that header may contain multiple addresses.

  reply_goes_to_list
         This variable controls whether Mailman will add its own
         Reply-To: header, and if so, what the value of that header will
         be (not counting original header stripping - see above).

         When you set this variable to Poster, no additional Reply-To:
         header will be added by Mailman. This setting is strongly
         recommended.

         When you set this variable to This list, a Reply-To: header
         pointing back to your list's posting address will be added.

         When you set this variable to Explicit address, the value of the
         variable reply_to_address (see below) will be added. Note that
         this is one situation where Reply-To: munging may have a
         legitimate purpose. Say you have two lists at your site, an
         announce list and a discussion list. The announce list might
         allow postings only from a small number of approved users; the
         general list membership probably can't post to this list. But
         you want to allow comments on announcements to be posted to the
         general discussion list by any list member. In this case, you
         can set the Reply-To: header for the announce list to point to
         the discussion list's posting address.

  reply_to_address
         This is the address that will be added in the Reply-To: header
         if reply_goes_to_list is set to Explicit address.

 2.1.3 Umbrella list settings

  TBD. Note that umbrella lists are deprecated and will be replace with a
  better mechanism for Mailman 3.0.

 2.1.4 Notifications

  Mailman sends notifications to the list administrators or list members
  under a number of different circumstances. Most of these notifications
  can be configured in this section, but see the Bounce Processing and
  Auto-responder categories for other notifications that Mailman can
  send.

  send_reminders
         By default Mailman sends all list members a monthly password
         reminder. This notice serves two purposes. First, it reminds
         people about all the lists they may be subscribed to on this
         domain, including the lists where their subscription may be
         disabled. Second, it reminds people about their passwords for
         these lists, as well as the url for their personal options
         pages, so that they can more easily configure their subscription
         options.

         Some people get annoyed with these monthly reminders, and they
         can disable the reminders via their subscription options page.
         For some lists, the monthly reminders aren't appropriate for any
         of the members, so you can disable them list-wide by setting the
         send_reminders variable to No.

  welcome_msg
         When new members are subscribed to the list, either by their own
         action, or the action of a list administrator, a welcome message
         can be sent to them. The welcome message contains some common
         boilerplate information, such as the name of the list,
         instructions for posting to the list, and the member's
         subscription password. You can add additional information to the
         welcome message by typing the text into the welcome_msg text
         box. Note that because this text is sent as part of an email, it
         should not contain HTML.

  send_welcome_msg
         This flag controls whether or not the welcome message is sent to
         new subscribers.

  goodbye_msg
         Like the welcome_msg, a ``goodbye message can be sent to
         members when they unsubscribe from the list. Unlike the welcome
         message, there's no boilerplate for the goodbye message. Enter
         the entire goodbye message you'd like unsubscribing members to
         receive into the goodbye_msg text box.

  send_goodbye_msg
         This flag controls whether or not the goodbye message is sent to
         unsubscribing members.

  admin_immed_notify
         List moderators get notifications of pending administrative
         actions, such as subscription or unsubscription requests that
         require moderator approval, or posted messages that are being
         held for moderator approval. List moderators will always get a
         daily summary of such pending requests, but they can also get
         immediate notifications when such a request is made. The
         admin_immed_notify variable controls whether these immediate
         notifications are sent or not. It's generally a good idea to
         leave this set to Yes.

  admin_notify_mchanges
         This variable controls whether the list administrators should
         get notifications when members join or leave the list.

  respond_to_post_requests
         This variable controls whether the original sender of a posting
         gets a notice when their message is held for moderator approval.

 2.1.5 Additional settings

  This section contains some miscellaneous settings for your mailing
  list.

  emergency
         When this option is enabled, all list traffic is emergency
         moderated, i.e. held for moderation. Turn this option on when
         your list is experiencing a flamewar and you want a cooling off
         period.

  new_member_options
         Each member has a set of subscription options which they can use
         to control how they receive messages and otherwise interact with
         the list. While the members can change these settings by logging
         into their personal options page, you might want to set the
         default for a number of the member options. You can do that with
         this variable, but see also the other categories for other
         member defaults you can set.

         This variable presents a set of checkboxes which control the
         defaults for some of the member options. Conceal the member's
         address specifies whether or not the address is displayed in the
         list roster. Acknowledge the member's posting controls whether
         or not Mailman sends an acknowledgement to a member when they
         post a message to the list. Do not send a copy of a member's own
         post specifies whether a member posting to the list will get a
         copy of their own posting. Filter out duplicate messages to list
         members (if possible) specifies whether members who are
         explicitly listed as a recipient of a message (e.g. via the Cc:
         header) will also get a copy from Mailman.

         Of course, members can always override these defaults by making
         changes on their membership options page.

  administrivia
         This option specifies whether Mailman will search posted
         messages for admimistrivia, in other words, email commands which
         usually should be posted to the -request address for the list.
         Setting this to Yes helps prevent such things as unsubscribe
         messages getting erroneously posted to the list.

         If a message seems to contain administrivia, it is held for
         moderator approval.

  max_message_size
         This option specifies a maximum message size, in kilobytes, over
         which the message will be held for moderator approval.

  host_name
         This option specifies the host name part of email addresses used
         by this list. For example, this is the example.com part of the
         posting address mylist@example.com.

         It's generally not a good idea to change this value, since its
         default value is specified when the mailing list is created.
         Changing this to an incorrect value could make it difficult to
         contact your mailing list. Also not that the url used to visit
         the list's pages is not configurable through the web interface.
         This is because if you messed it up, you'd have to have the site
         administrator fix it.

  include_rfc2369_headers
         RFC 2369 is an internet standard that describes a bunch of
         headers that mailing list managers should add to messages to
         make it easier for people to interact with the list. Mail
         reading programs which support this standard may provide buttons
         for easy access to the list's archives, or for subscribing and
         unsubscribing to the list. It's generally a good idea to enable
         these headers as it provides for an improved user experience.
         These headers are often called the List-* headers.

         However, not all mail readers are standards compliant yet, and
         if you have a large number of members who are using
         non-compliant mail readers, they may be annoyed at these
         headers. You should first try to educate your members as to why
         these headers exist, and how to hide them in their mail clients.
         As a last resort you can disable these headers, but this is not
         recommended.

  include_list_post_header
         The List-Post: header is one of the headers recommended by RFC
         2369. However for some announce-only mailing lists, only a very
         select group of people are allowed to post to the list; the
         general membership is usually not allowed to post to such lists.
         For lists of this nature, the List-Post: header is misleading.
         Select No to disable the inclusion of this header. (This does
         not affect the inclusion of the other List-* headers.)

2.2 The Passwords Category

  As mentioned above, there are two primary administrative roles for
  mailing lists. In this category you can specify the password for these
  roles.

  The list owner has total control over the configuration of their
  mailing list (within some bounds as specified by the site
  administrator). Note that on this page, for historical reasons, the
  list owner role is described here as the list administrator. You can
  set the list owner's password by entering it in the password field on
  the left. You must type it twice for confirmation. Note that if you
  forget this password, the only way for you to get back into your list's
  administrative pages is to ask the site administrator to reset it for
  you (there's no password reminders for list owners).

  If you want to delegate list moderation to someone else, you can enter
  a different moderator password in the field on the right (typed twice
  for confirmation). Note that if you aren't going to delegate
  moderation, and the same people are going to both configure the list
  and moderate postings to the list, don't enter anything into the
  moderator password fields. If you do enter a separate moderator
  password, be sure to fill in the moderator variable in the General
  options category page.

2.3 The Language Options Category

  Mailman is multilingual and internationalized, meaning you can set up
  your list so that members can interact with it in any of a number of
  natural languages. Of course, Mailman won't translate list postings. :)

  However, if your site administrator has enabled its support, you can
  set your list up to support any of about two dozen languages, such as
  German, Italian, Japanese, or Spanish. Your list members can then
  choose any of your supported languages as their preferred language for
  interacting with the list. Such things as their member options page
  will be displayed in this language. Each mailing list also has its own
  preferred language which is the language the list supports if no other
  language context is known.

  These variables control the language settings for your mailing list:

  preferred_language
         This is the list's preferred language, which is the language
         that the list administrative pages will be displayed in. Also
         any messages sent to the list owners by Mailman will be sent in
         this language. This option is presented as a drop-down list
         containing the language enabled in the available_languages
         variable.

  available_languages
         This set of checkboxes contains all the natural languages that
         your site administrator has made available to your mailing
         lists. Select any language that you'd either like your members
         to be able to view the list in, or that you'd like to be able to
         use in your list's preferred_language variable.

  encode_ascii_prefixes
         If your mailing list's preferred language uses a non-ASCII
         character set and the subject_prefix contains non-ASCII
         characters, the prefix will always be encoded according to the
         relevant standards. However, if your subject prefix contains
         only ASCII characters, you may want to set this option to Never
         to disable prefix encoding. This can make the subject headers
         slightly more readable for users with mail readers that don't
         properly handle non-ASCII encodings.

         Note however, that if your mailing list receives both encoded
         and unencoded subject headers, you might want to choose As
         needed. Using this setting, Mailman will not encode ASCII
         prefixes when the rest of the header contains only ASCII
         characters, but if the original header contains non-ASCII
         characters, it will encode the prefix. This avoids an ambiguity
         in the standards which could cause some mail readers to display
         extra, or missing spaces between the prefix and the original
         header.

2.4 The Membership Management Category

  The Membership Management category is unlike the other administrative
  categories. It doesn't contain configuration variables or list
  settings. Instead, it presents a number of pages that allow you to
  manage the membership of you list. This includes pages for subscribing
  and unsubscribing members, and for searching for members, and for
  changing various member-specific settings.

  More details on membership management are described in the Membership
  Management section.

2.5 The Non-digest Options Category

  Mailman delivers messages to users via two modes. List members can
  elect to receive postings in bundles call digests one or a few times a
  day, or they can receive messages immediately whenever the message is
  posted to the list. This latter delivery mode is also called non-digest
  delivery. There are two administrative categories available for
  separately controlling digest and non-digest delivery. You can even
  disable one or the other forms of delivery (but not both).

  Both kinds of delivery can have list-specific headers and footers added
  to them which can contain other useful information you want your list
  members to see. For example, you can include instructions for
  unsubscribing, or a url to the lists digest, or any other information.

  Non-digest deliveries can also be personalized which means certain
  parts of the message can contain information tailored to the member
  receiving the message. For example, the To: header will contain the
  address of the member when deliveries are personalized. Footers and
  headers can contain personalized information as well, such as a link to
  the individual user's options page.

  In addition, personalized messages will contain extra information that
  Mailman can use to unambiguously track bounces from members.
  Ordinarily, Mailman does some pattern recognition on bounce messages to
  determine list members whose addresses are no longer valid, but because
  of the vagaries of mail systems, and the countless forwards people can
  put in place, it's often the case that bounce messages don't contain
  any useful information in them. Personalized messages avoid this
  problem by encoding information in certain headers that unambiguously
  identify the recipient of a message. If that message bounces, Mailman
  will know exactly which member it was intended for.

  Note that because personalization requires extra system resources, it
  must be enabled by the site administrator before you can choose it.

  Here are the variables which control non-digest delivery:

  nondigestable
         This option controls whether members can receive immediate
         delivery or not. If not, they will be forced to receive messages
         in digests. You can't disable non-digest delivery if digests are
         already disabled.

  personalize
         This option turns on message personalization.

  msg_header
         This text box lets you enter information that will be included
         in the header of every non-digest message sent through the list.

         See below for more information on what can go in the headers and
         footers. If you leave this text box empty, no header will be
         added.

  msg_footer
         Just like with the header, you can add a footer to every
         message. The same rules apply to footers as apply to headers.

  Headers and footers can contain any text you want. For non-English
  lists, the headers and footers can contain any character in the
  character set of the list's preferred language. The headers and footers
  can also contain substitution variables which Mailman will fill in with
  information taken from the mailing list. These substitutions are in
  Python string interpolation format, where something like %(list_name)s
  is substituted with he name of the mailing list. Note that the trailing
  "s" is required^2.

  For example, a footer containing the following text:

This is the \%(list_name)s mailing list Description: \%(description)s

  might get attached to postings like so:

This is the Example mailing list Description: An example of Mailman mailing lists

  Here is the list of substitution variables available for your headers
  and footers:

  real_name
         This is the value of the real_name configuration variable in the
         General options category.

  list_name
         This is the canonical name of the mailing list. In other words
         it's the posting address of the list^3.

  host_name
         This is the domain name part of the email address for this list.

  web_page_url
         This is the base url for contacting the list via the web. It can
         be appended with listinfo/%(list_name)s to yield the general
         list information page for the mailing list.

  description
         The brief description of the mailing list.

  info
         This is the full description of the mailing list.

  cgiext
         This is the extension added to CGI scripts. It might be the
         empty string, .cgi, or something else depending on how your site
         is configured.

  Note that real_name, host_name, description, and info substitution
  variables take their values from the list configuration variables of
  the same name.

  When personalization is enabled, the following substitution variables
  are also available:

  user_address
         The address of the recipient of the message, coerced to lower
         case.

  user_delivered_to
         The case-preserved address that the user subscribed to the
         mailing list with^4.

  user_password
         The user's password, in clear text.

  user_name
         The user's full name.

  user_optionsurl
         The url to the user's personal options page.

2.6 The Digest Options Category

  Digest delivery is a way to bundle many articles together into one
  package, which can be delivered once per day (if there were any posted
  articles), or whenever the package is bigger than a specified limit.
  Some users may prefer this style of delivery for higher traffic lists
  since they will receive fewer messages.

  Mailman supports two standard digest formats, and if digests are
  enabled, users can select which of the two formats they receive. One is
  MIME digests, where each message is an attachment inside a
  multipart/digest. This format also contains a summary table of
  contents, and of course the an optional header and footer, and it
  retains most of the headers of the original messages.

  The second type is called ``plaintext digests because they are
  readable in mail readers that don't support MIME. Actually, they adhere
  to the RFC 1153 digest standard. The retain some, but not all of the
  original messages, but can also include a summary and headers and
  footers.

  Like non-digest delivery, you can enable or disable digest delivery,
  but you cannot disable both types of delivery. You can specify
  different headers and footers for digest and non-digest deliveries. You
  cannot personalize digest deliveries.

  As list administrator, you may want to send an urgent message to all
  list members, bypassing the normal digest bundling. To do this, send
  the message with a Urgent: header, where the value of the header is the
  list administrator's password. Non-digest members will receive the
  message like normal, but digest members will receive the message
  immediately^5.

  Here are the variables which control digest delivery:

  digestable
         The option controls whether members can receive digest
         deliveries or not. If not, they will be forced to receive
         immediate deliveries. You can't disable digests if non-digests
         are already disabled.

  digest_is_default
         Controls which style of delivery is the default for new members.
         You can choose Regular (non-digest) or Digest delivery.

  mime_is_default_digest
         If a member is allowed to choose digests, this variable controls
         which is the default digest style they will receive. Plain
         digests are RFC 1153 format as described above.

  digest_size_threshold
         Normally, digest members get at least one message per day, if
         there have been any messages posted to the list. However, for
         high volume lists, you may want to send out digests when the
         size has reached a certain threshold, otherwise, the one digest
         they receive could be huge. This variable controls the size
         threshold by specifying the maximum digest size in kilobytes.
         Note that this threshold isn't exact. Set this variable to zero
         to specify that there is no size threshold, in which case no
         more than one digest will be sent out per day.

  digest_send_periodic
         This variable actually controls whether or not a digest is sent
         daily when the size threshold has not yet been met. If set to
         No, then digests will only be sent when they are bigger than
         digest_size_threshold.

  digest_header
         This text box lets you enter information that will be included
         in the header of every digest message sent through the list. The
         same information can go in this header as can go in the
         msg_header, except for the personalization variables.

  digest_footer
         Just like with the header, you can add a footer to every
         message. The same rules apply to digest footers as apply to
         digest headers.

  digest_volume_frequency
         Each digest is numbered with a volume and an issue. This
         variable controls how often a new digest volume is sent. When
         the digest volume number is incremented, the issue number is
         reset to 1.

  _new_volume
         This is an action variable, which forces an increment of the
         volume number as soon as you submit the form.

  _send_digest_now
         This is another action variable. Select Yes, submit the form,
         and the current digest is packaged up and sent to digest
         members, regardless of size (well, there has to be at least one
         message in the digest).

2.7 The Privacy Options Category

  The Privacy category lets you control how much of the list's
  information is public, as well as who can send messages to your list.
  It also contains some spam detection filters. Note that this section is
  not used to control whether your list's archives are public or private;
  for that, use the category.

  There are four sub-categories:
    * Subscription rules - i.e. the rules for joining and leaving your
      mailing list
    * Sender filters - the rules for who may post messages to your list
    * Recipient filters - moderation rules based on the recipient of the
      message
    * Spam filters - some regular expression based rules for header
      matching

  The sender, recipient, and spam filtering rules are part of the general
  list moderation features of Mailman. When a message is posted to the
  list, it is matched against a number of criteria, the outcome of which
  determines whether the message is reflected to the membership or not.
  In general, the outcome is one of four states:

    * Approved or Accepted - the message may be sent on to the members of
      the mailing list.
    * Hold - the message will be held for moderator approval. The list
      owners and moderators will then have to explicitly approve the
      message before the list members will see it.
    * Reject - the message is bounced back to the original sender, often
      with a notice containing the reason the message was rejected. The
      list members never see rejected messages.
    * Discard - the message is simply thrown away without further
      processing.

  Many of the fields in this section are text boxes accepting addresses,
  one per line. Unless otherwise noted, these also accept regular
  expressions which will be matched against an address, if the line
  begins with a (caret) character.

 2.7.1 Subscription rules

  This subcategory controls the rules for exposing the existance of this
  list, and for what new members must do in order to subscribe to the
  list.

  advertised
         This option controls whether this list will show up in the list
         overview for the site. Normally, an overview contains the name
         and short description of every mailing list in the virtual
         domain. By setting this variable to No, it will not show up in
         this overview, nor will it show up in the administrative
         overview. The only way then to find the list is to guess (or
         know!) its name.

  subscribe_policy
         This option controls the steps that a new member must take to
         join the list. The available options may differ based on some
         defaults that the site administrator chooses. They are:

         + None - No verification is done on the subscribing member. This
           is also called open subscriptions and is generally disabled by
           default. The site administrator must allow list admins to
           choose this option; if not, this option will not be presented
           to you.
         + Confirm - An email confirmation step is required before the
           address is added to the list. When a member requests
           subscription, either via the web page or by sending a message
           to yourlist-join@example.com, Mailman will send a confirmation
           message to the requesting address. This mail-back confirmation
           contains a unique identifier, which the requester can present
           to Mailman in order to confirm their subscription. This can be
           done either by replying to the mail-back, or by visiting the
           url in the mail-back message. The url points to a page that
           lets the user either discard or confirm their request.
         + Require approval - All subscription requests are held for
           approval of the list moderator. No mail-back confirmation is
           sent, but the list admins will recieve a message indicating
           that approval is pending.
         + Confirm and approve - Here, a mail-back notice must first be
           confirmed by the requester. Once confirmed, the list moderator
           must then approve the request. This is the most secure method
           for users to subscribe since it both verifies the requesting
           address, and forces the list moderators to approve the
           request.

  unsubscribe_policy
         Specifies whether the list moderator's approval is required for
         unsubscription requests. No is highly recommended, since it is
         exceedingly impolite to not allow people to leave a mailing list
         whenever they want (i.e. opt-out). Yes is useful in some
         specialized contexts; e.g. you may not want to allow employees
         to unsubscribe from the company newsletter.

  ban_list
         This contains a list of addresses (or regular expressiosn), one
         per line, that are banned from ever subscribing to your mailing
         list. If a match occurs during the subscription process, the
         request will be automatically rejected, and the requester will
         get a rejection notice. You can use this to permanently ban
         troublesome posters to a members-only list.

  private_roster
         This specifies who is allowed to view the roster of member
         addresses. If you choose Anyone, then the list membership is
         completely public. You can limit exposure of the roster to just
         list members, or just to the list administrators. In the former
         case, a user must enter a valid member's address and password
         before they can view the roster. In the latter case, a list
         administrator's password must be enter; if a matching admin
         password is entered, address field is ignored.

  obscure_addresses
         Controls whether some simple obfuscation of addresses is used
         when member addresses are included on web pages. This should
         reduce the opportunity for email address harvesting by spammers,
         although it probably doesn't eliminate it.

 2.7.2 Sender filters

  When a message is posted to the list, a series of moderation criteria
  are applied to determine the disposition of the message. This section
  contains the modeation controls for postings from both members and
  non-members.

  default_member_moderation
         Member postings are held for moderation if their moderation flag
         is turned on. Note that only the list administrators can change
         the value of a member's moderation flag.

         You can control whether new members get their moderation flag
         turned on or off by default when they subscribe to the list. By
         turning this flag off by default, postings by members will be
         allowed without further intervention (barring other restrictions
         such as size or implicit recipient lists - see below). By
         turning the flag on, you can quarantine new member postings to
         make sure that they meet your criteria for netiquette,
         topicality, etc. Once you determine that the new member
         understands the community's posting rules, you can turn off
         their moderation flag and let their postings go through
         unstopped.

         E-newsletter style lists can also be set up by using the
         moderation flag. By setting the member_moderation_action to
         Reject, and by turning off the moderation flag for just the few
         approved senders, your list will operate in essentially a
         one-way direction. Note that you'd also need to reject or
         discard postings from non-members.

  member_moderation_action
         This is the action to take for postings from a member who's
         moderation flag is set. For typical discussion lists, you'll
         likely set this to Hold so that the list moderator will get a
         chance to manually approve, reject, or discard the message. For
         e-newsletter and announcement lists, you might want to set this
         to Reject or Discard.

         Note that when a moderated member posts to your list, and the
         member_moderation_action is set to Hold, the message will appear
         on the administrative requests page. When you dispose of the
         message, you will be given an opportunity to clear the
         moderation flag at the same time. If you're quarantining new
         posts, this makes it very convenient to both approve a new
         member's post and de-moderate them at the same time.

  member_moderation_notice
         When a member's moderation flag is turned on and
         member_moderation_action is Reject, this variable contains the
         text sent in the rejection notice.

  The next batch of variables controls what happens when non-members post
  messages to the list. Each of these accepts one email address per line;
  regular expressions are allowed if the line starts with the (caret)
  character. These address lists are always consulted in the order in
  which they're presented on this page (i.e. accepts first, followed by
  holds, rejections, and discards).

  accept_these_nonmembers
         Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are
         accepted, barring other list restrictions due to size, implicit
         recipients, etc. You might want to add alternative addresses of
         approved posters to this list.

  hold_these_nonmembers
         Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are
         held for moderator approval.

  reject_these_nonmembers
         Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are
         rejected, i.e. bounced back to the original sender. There
         currently is no way to add additional text to the rejection
         message.

  discard_these_nonmembers
         Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are
         discarded, with no bounce back message. You might want to add
         the addresses of known spammers to this list.

  generic_nonmember_action
         This variable controls what happens to non-member posts when the
         address of the sender doesn't match any of the above four lists.
         If you set this to Hold, the posting will appear on the
         administrative requests page, and you will be given an
         opportunity to add the non-member to one of the above four lists
         at the same time you dispose of the held message.

  forward_auto_discards
         When messages from non-members are discarded, either because the
         sender address matched discard_these_nonmembers, or because
         generic_nonmember_action is Discard, you can choose whether such
         messages are forwarded to the lsit administrators or not.

 2.7.3 Recipient Filters

  The variables in this section control various filters based on the
  recipient of the message.

  require_explicit_destination
         This controls whether the mailing list posting address must be
         explicitly named in the To: or Cc: recipient lists. The main
         reason why it wouldn't is if the message was blind-carbon-copied
         (i.e. Bcc:'d) to the list. Spammers like to do this, but
         sometimes legitimate messages are forwarded to the list this
         way.

         If the list is not explicitly addressed and this setting is
         turned on, the message will be held for moderator approval.

  acceptable_aliases
         This is the list of alternative addresses that are acceptable as
         a list posting address when require_explicit_destination is
         enabled. This is useful for when there aliases for the main
         posting address (e.g. help@example.com may be an alias for
         help-list@example.com).

  max_num_recipients
         This is the maximum number of explicit recipients that are
         allowed on the posted message. Spammers sometimes send messages
         with lots of explicit recipients, so setting this number to a
         reasonable value may cut down on spam.

 2.7.4 Spam Filters

  This section provides some adjuncts to spam fighting tools; it doesn't
  replace dedicated anti-spam tools such as SpamAssassin or Spambayes.

  bounce_matching_headers
         This variable contains header regular expressions, one per line,
         and if any of a message's headers matches one of these patterns,
         it will be held for moderation. The format is a colon separated
         header and value, where the header is case insensitive and the
         value is any valid Python regular expression. Lines that start
         with # are ignored.

         This variable can be used to catch known spammers by writing
         regexps that match against To: or Cc: lines, or known-bad
         Message-ID:s. Perhaps more useful though are patterns that match
         headers added by spam detection tools higher up in the tool
         chain. For example, you might configure SpamAssassin to add an
         X-Spam-Score: header with between zero and 5 stars depending on
         the spam score. Then you can add a line to this variable like:

   X-Spam-Score: [*]{3,5}

         This line will match from 3 to 5 stars in the value of this
         field.

2.8 The Bounce Processing Category

  These policies control the automatic bounce processing system in
  Mailman. Here's an overview of how it works:

  When a bounce is received, Mailman tries to extract two pieces of
  information from the message: the address of the member the message was
  intended for, and the severity of the problem causing the bounce. The
  severity can be either hard for fatal errors, or soft for transient
  errors. When in doubt, a hard severity is used.

  If no member address can be extracted from the bounce, then the bounce
  message is usually discarded. Every member has a bounce score,
  initialized at zero, and every time we encounter a bounce from a member
  we increment that member's score. Hard bounces increment by 1 while
  soft bounces increment by 0.5. We only increment the bounce score once
  per day, so even if we receive ten hard bounces from a member per day,
  their score will increase by only 1 for that day.

  When a member's bounce score is greater than the bounce score threshold
  (see below), the member's subscription is disabled. Once disabled, the
  member will not receive any postings from the list until their
  membership is explicitly re-enabled, either by the list administrator
  or the user. However, they will receive occasional reminders that their
  membership has been disabled, and these reminders will include
  information about how to re-enable their membership. You can control
  both the number of reminders the member will receive and the frequency
  with which these reminders are sent.

  There is one other important configuration variable; after a certain
  period of time - during which no bounces from the member are received -
  the bounce information is considered stale and discarded. Thus by
  adjusting this value, and the score threshold, you can control how
  quickly bouncing members are disabled. You should tune both of these to
  the frequency and traffic volume of your list.

  bounce_processing
         Specifies whether or not this list should do automatic bounce
         processing.

  bounce_score_threshold
         This is the bounce score above which a member's subscription
         will be automatically disabled. When the subscription is
         re-enabled, their bounce score will be reset to zero. This value
         can be a floating point number.

  bounce_info_stale_after
         Thenumber of days after which a member's bounce information is
         considered stale. If no new bounces have been received in the
         interrim, the bounce score is reset to zero. This value must be
         an integer.

  bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings
         The number of notices a disabled member will receive before
         their address is removed from the mailing list's roster. Set
         this to 0 to immediately remove an address from the list once
         their bounce score exceeds the threshold. This value must be an
         integer.

  bounce_you_are_disabled_warnings_interval
         The number of days between each disabled notification.

  bounce_unrecognized_goes_to_list_owner
         This variable controls whether unrecognized bounces are
         discarded, or forwarded on the list administrator. The bounce
         detector isn't perfect, although personalization can make it
         much more accurate. The list owner may want to receive
         unrecognized bounces so that they can manually disable or remove
         such members.

  bounce_notify_owner_on_disable
         This option controls whether or not the list owner is notified
         when a member's subscription is automatically disabled due to
         their bounce threshold being reached.

  bounce_notify_owner_on_removal
         This option controls whether or not the list owner is notified
         when a member is removed from the list after their disabled
         notifications have been exhausted.

2.9 The Archiving Options Category

  Mailman comes with a built-in web-based archiver called Pipermail,
  although it can be configured to use external, third party archivers.

  archive
         This option tells Mailman whether to archive messages it
         receives or not, regardless of whether Pipermail or a third
         party archiver is used. Turn this off if you don't want to
         archive messages.

         Note that senders can control whether their own posts are
         archived, on an individual per-message basis. If the posted
         message has a X-No-Archive: header (regardless of value), or a
         X-Archive: header with a value of No (case insensitive), then
         the message will not be archived, although it will be treated as
         normal in all other ways.

  archive_private
         Controls whether Pipermail archives are private or public.
         Private archives require a valid member address and password, or
         a list administrator password in order to access them. This
         option has no effect when a third party archiver is used.

  archive_volume_frequency
         Controls how Pipermail splits messages in the archive. The most
         common option is Monthly meaning a new archive volume is started
         every month. Very high volume lists may want a shorter frequency
         (e.g. Weekly or Daily) where as lower volume lists may want a
         longer frequency (e.g. Yearly). This option has no effect when a
         third party archiver is used.

2.10 The Mail/News Gateway Category

  Mailman has a sophisticated mail-to-news gateway feature. It can
  independently gate messages from news to mail and vice versa, and can
  even be used to manage moderated newsgroups.

2.11 The Auto-responder Category

2.12 The Content Filtering Category

2.13 The Topics Category

                           3 Membership Management

                   4 Tending to Pending Moderator Requests

                       5 Editing the Public HTML Pages

                         6 Deleting the Mailing List

                            1 This is an Appendix

  To create an appendix in a Python HOWTO document, use markup like this:

\appendix

\section{This is an Appendix}

To create an appendix in a Python HOWTO document, ....

\section{This is another}

Just add another \section{}, but don't say \appendix again.

                           About this document ...

  GNU Mailman - List Administration Manual, September 12, 2007, Release
  2.1

  This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator.

  LaTeX2HTML is Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, Nikos Drakos,
  Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds, and Copyright ©
  1997, 1998, Ross Moore, Mathematics Department, Macquarie University,
  Sydney.

  The application of LaTeX2HTML to the Python documentation has been
  heavily tailored by Fred L. Drake, Jr. Original navigation icons were
  contributed by Christopher Petrilli.
    __________________________________________________________________

   Footnotes

  ... representation^1
         Specifically, a Python pickle

  ... required^2
         The site administrator can configure lists to use a simpler
         interpolation format, where $list_name or ${list_name} would be
         substituted with the mailing list's name. Ask your site
         administrator if the've configured your list this way.

  ... list^3
         For backward compatibility, the variable _internal_name is
         equivalent.

  ... with^4
         Usually it makes no difference which of user_address and
         user_delivered_to is used, but it's important to remember that
         they can be different. When they're different, Mailman always
         uses the lower case address as the key to the member's
         subscription information, but it always delivers messages to the
         case-preserved version.

  ... immediately^5
         They'll also receive the message in the digest.
    __________________________________________________________________

  Previous Page Up One Level Next Page GNU Mailman - List Administration
                                  Manual
    __________________________________________________________________

  Release 2.1, documentation updated on September 12, 2007.