Owner’s Guide: Maintain a Mailman list

• Control access to your list
• Require approval to subscribe or unsubscribe
• List moderation settings
  • Require approval for all postings from list members
  • Require approval for all postings from specific list members
• Control your moderation notifications
• Discard posts from non-members
• Turn on Emergency Moderation

Control access to your list

Mailman allows list owners to control access to the list and messages posted to the list. Owners can require approvals for subscriptions, revoked subscriptions, and message postings.

Require approval to subscribe or unsubscribe

List owners can require approval for people to subscribe to or leave the list.

1. Log in to your main Mailman page.

   • In the address window of your web browser, enter lists.uw.edu.
   • Near the top of the page, click Login, and then enter your UW NetID and password.
   • Select the Owner role and click the name of your list.
2. In the menu at the top of the page, click Settings.
   
3. In the left navigation click Member Policy.
4. To require owner or moderator approval to subscribe, set Subscription Policy to Moderate. You can also require subscribers to confirm their subscriptions.
5. To require owner or moderator approval to unsubscribe, set Un-Subscription Policy to Moderate. You can also require people who unsubscribe to confirm leaving the list.
   • Note: For most lists, we do not recommend to requiring approval for unsubscribing because it adds unnecessary work.
6. When finished, click Save changes.

List moderation settings

When you request a new list, you can specify whether it will be moderated. You can change the moderation for list members and non-members.

Require approval for all postings from list members

1. Log in to your main Mailman page.

   • In the address window of your web browser, enter lists.uw.edu.
   • Near the top of the page, click Login, and then enter your UW NetID and password.
   • Select the Owner role and click the name of your list.
2. In the menu at the top of the page click Settings and in the left navigation click Message Acceptance.
3. Scroll down to the Default action to take when a member posts to the list.
4. Select Hold for moderation.

Require approval for all postings from specific list members

1. Log in to your main Mailman page.

   • In the address window of your web browser, enter lists.uw.edu.
   • Near the top of the page, click Login, and then enter your UW NetID and password.
   • Select the Owner role and click the name of your list.
2. In the menu at the top of the page click Users, select Member from the drop-down menu, and locate the list member.
3. In the Address column, click the member’s email address link.
4. Scroll down to Moderation and select Hold for moderation in the drop-down menu.
5. Click Save changes.Note: If you want to moderate only a few list members, you will need to specify each one individually. Currently, there is not a good way to make bulk changes.

You can set other moderation actions for individual users in the Moderation section.

• List default follows the list’s default member action.
• Hold for moderation holds the message for approval by the list moderators.
• Reject automatically rejects the message and sends a rejection notice (aka, “bounce”) to the post’s author. List owners can configure the text of the bounce notice.
• Discard discards the message, without notifying the post’s author.
• Accept automatically accepts any postings without any further checks.
• Default Processing runs additional checks and accepts the message.

Control your moderation notifications

To control when you receive the moderation notification (immediately or once daily):

1. Log in to your main Mailman page.

   • In the address window of your web browser, enter lists.uw.edu.
   • Near the top of the page, click Login, and then enter your UW NetID and password.
   • Select the Owner role and click the name of your list.
2. In the menu at the top of the page, click Settings and select Automatic Responses from the drop-down menu. Scroll down to the Admin immed notify setting.
3. By default, notifications are sent immediately. To receive notifications daily, select No, to receive notifications immediately, select Yes.

Discard posts from non-members

1. Log in to your main Mailman page.

   • In the address window of your web browser, enter lists.uw.edu.
   • Near the top of the page, click Login, and then enter your UW NetID and password.
   • Select the Owner role and click the name of your list.
2. In the menu at the top of the page click Settings and select Message Acceptance.
3. In the Default action to take when a non-member posts to the list setting, select Discard*.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save changes.

*You can also select to hold messages from non-members for moderation, reject the messages with notification, accept immediately, and process using defaults.

Turn on (and off) Emergency Moderation

If your activity on your list gets out of control, you can enable emergency moderation which holds all list traffic for moderation. Emergency moderation is designed to moderate all traffic in emergencies, such as to quell a high email flow.  It is not intended to be used routinely to moderate all posts.  Thus, when emergency moderation is on, posts that are not held for some other reason are held for emergency moderation, and the owner/moderator is not immediately notified even if admin immed notify is set to yes.  Daily reminder notifications will still include this moderated mail.

1. Log in to your main Mailman page.

   • In the address window of your web browser, enter lists.uw.edu.
   • Near the top of the page, click Login, and then enter your UW NetID and password.
   • Select the Owner role and click the name of your list.
2. In the menu at the top of the page, click Settings.
3. In the left navigation, select Message Acceptance.
4. Scroll down to Emergency Moderation.
5. Select Yes.
   • To return your list to normal operations, change this option back to No.
6. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save changes.

Moderation requests for an unmoderated list

Even if your list is configured as unmoderated, you may receive moderation notices. Each moderation notice will give a reason why the message was moderated. The following are examples of each type of moderation message:

Reason: Message body is too big

Explanation: Mailman will compare the size of the incoming message to the size allowed for each list. By default, any message over 40 KB is held for moderation. Any message over 10 MB will be returned to sender as undeliverable.

Setting: To control the maximum message size allowed for your list:

1. In the menu at the top of the page, click Settings.
2. In the left navigation, select Message Acceptance.
3. Scroll down to Maximum message size.
4. Type the message size. You can set it to 0 for the maximum allowable size of 10 MB.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save changes.

Reason: Post to moderated list

Explanation: Individual subscribers can be moderated (rather than having the entire list moderated for everyone). This is the reason that will be given if a moderated member sends a message to the list.

Setting: An individual’s moderation can be turned on and off in the Users settings.

Reason: Post by non-member to a members-only list

Explanation: A non-member tried to post to a list that is configured to only allow members to post.

Setting: You can specify to accept messages (no moderation), hold for moderation, reject or discard messages from specific non-members.

1. In the menu at the top of the page, click Settings.
2. In the left navigation, select Message Acceptance.
3. Scroll down to the Accept/Hold/Reject/Discard these non-members fields.
4. Type or paste the non-members’ email addresses.
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save changes.

Reason: Message has implicit destination

Explanation: By default, Mailman looks for the list’s address in the To or Cc fields of incoming messages. If the address is not explicitly given in the To or Cc fields (e.g., if the list has been blind carbon copied or if the list is subscribed to another list to which the message was originally sent), the message will be held for approval.

Setting: You can configure the list so that the address is not required to be in the To or Cc fields by going to Settings > Message Acceptance and setting the Require Explicit Destination setting to No.

Reason: Too many recipients to the message

Explanation: Mailman will examine the number of email addresses listed in the To or Cc fields of incoming messages. By default, Mailman will hold for moderation any message that contains more than 10 addresses in these fields (the list’s address is only one address and the number of subscribers on the list does not have an effect on this setting).

Setting: You can change the setting by going to Settings > Message Acceptance and changing the Maximum number of recipients, and clicking Save changes. Change this setting to 0 for no limit.

Reason: Message has a suspicious header

Explanation: Your Mailman list can be configured to moderate messages with specific headers (e.g., “Subject: On Vacation”). If a message contains such a header, it will be held for moderation.

Setting: Go to the Header filter section in the top navigation menu. Type in the header to filter on and the pattern and select an action. You can add, delete, and change the order of headers on this list.