Owner’s Guide: Manage Subscribers

Last updated: October 19, 2023
Audience: StudentsInstructorsStaffIT Staff / Technical

This information applies to: New Mailman

View subscriber 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 Users. From the drop-down menu, select Members.
  3. List members appear on the next page. You will see how their messages are delivered (regular or digest), their moderation action, and bounce score. Note: a moderation action of None means the member has the list default moderation.
  4. You can select to display from 10 – 200 members on your screen.
  5. To export your member list, click the CSV Export button located above the member list.

Add subscribers

  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 Mass operations. From the drop-down menu, select Mass subscribe.

  3. Enter the email addresses (one per line) in the box provided. If you want to include a name with each address, see the instructions below the box.
  4. Select how subscribers will be added to your list.
    • Check Pre confirm if you want your subscribers to be automatically added.
      • Note: if you have a welcome message set up, it will be sent to your subscribers automatically.
    • Check Pre approved if you don’t want to have to approve the subscription request.
    • Check Pre Verified if you don’t want users to have to verify that their email address is valid. If you leave it unchecked, subscribers will receive a message asking them to confirm their email address.
    • Check Invitation if you would like to invite people to subscribe to the list. If you decide to invite people, all the other checkboxes will be ignored. Subscribers will be subscribed only after they accept the email invitation.
    • Select whether to send a welcome message. List default refers to the “Send welcome message” field in the Settings > Automatic Responses page. For more information, see the Getting Started section of the Owner’s Guide.
  5. Click Subscribe users.

    Note:     If you are subscribing more than 8,000 users at a time, please contact to either set up synchronization of your mailing list with a UW Group or to have UW-IT add the subscribers. If you add thousands of subscribers at a time, it will strain Mailman and potentially delay sending messages to other lists. If you un-subscribe everyone and then add new subscribers, you will not benefit from Mailman’s bounce processing which cleans out unusable email addresses.

Remove subscribers

  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 Mass operations. From the drop-down menu, select Mass removal.
  3. Enter the email addresses (one per line) in the box provided.
  4. When finished, click Remove listed users.
  5. To unsubscribe everyone, click Remove ALL members twice.
    • Note: If you created a goodbye message, people will receive it when they are unsubscribed.

Deal with problem subscribers

If someone uses your list inappropriately by sending irrelevant messages, large numbers of messages, or demeaning messages, you have several options:

  1. Email a statement of appropriate use and conduct to the list.
  2. Unsubscribe the offending user (see the Remove subscribers section above).
  3. Set up your list so that only subscribers can post messages to it.
  4. If the offending user is a UW student, faculty, or staff, report the inappropriate use to UW-IT by sending an email message to help@uw.edu describing the situation and including samples of the offending messages. Unethical use of University computing resources can be grounds for disciplinary action, including loss of computer accounts.
  5. Add the person’s email address to the list of addresses that are banned from membership on your list.

Ban someone from your 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 Ban List.
  3. In the Add ban field, enter the email address of the offending user. If you want to ban all users from a domain, you can use regular expressions. For example, to ban everyone from spammers.com type *@spammers.com.
  4. Click Ban email.
  5. If you change your mind, you can remove users from the ban list by clicking the red checkbox next to their name.