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                                   Manual
     _________________________________________________________________

GNU Mailman - List Administration Manual

   Barry A. Warsaw

   Release 2.1
   December 13, 2004

                                 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, December 13, 2004, 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 December 13, 2004.
