Adrian Pepper's Quick-Start Guide to Mailman List Moderation, Accept

* (rendered for 'sample' list)

The following represents the web page you may sometimes see at

• https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/admindb/list-name-parameter

It contains some sample moderator requests which should be dealt with. (The posts are not real, however, so will not actually exist if you queried the real moderation page).

In this case, we have included only a selection of requests which we shall assume might be reasonable to Accept (or Approve; similar concept for slightly different situations).

In reality, however, there are many reasons for not selecting Accept even if you recognize, from address and content, the poster. First of all, if you instead Reject the message, it will inform the sender that they should use a different method (email address) for posting to the list in question. Furthermore, approving the posting may merely result in it being moderated by the sublists of the list. Therefore, if the post looks urgent, and the list (list-name-parameter) has no sublists, then perhaps you can consider using Accept rather than Reject. But remember, every time you Accept a moderated post, you confuse the rules for everybody. (Even worse, it is possible in at least two ways to permanently arrange for certain non-members to post to the list, which can result in different restrictions for different members).

But, in any case, this page attempts to demonstrate what you would do to change some (or all) of the "radio buttons" to Accept (or Approve).

That is look for buttons like the following.

And change them to:

After making the changes

can be selected, to cause all the requests to be processed.

After reading this page, go to Accept, Page 2 to see the action which should have been taken.

Sample Page

(rendered for sample list)

HERE FOLLOWS a table, rendered to represent a semi-fictional webpage 'https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/admindb/list-name-parameter' as might theoretically be seen for the 'sample' list)

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Administrative requests for mailing list: list-name-parameter This page contains a summary of the current set of administrative requests requiring your approval for the list-name-parameter mailing list. First, you will find the list of pending subscription and unsubscription requests, if any, followed by any postings being held for your approval. For each administrative request, please select the action to take, clicking on the Submit All Data button when finished. More detailed instructions are also available. You can also view the details of all held postings.  Discard all messages marked Defer Subscription Requests Address/name Your decision Reason for refusal stanley@stanley.net Defer Approve Reject Discard  Permanently ban from this list Unsubscription Requests User address/name Your decision Reason for refusal smharper@uwaterloo.ca Harper, Steven Defer Approve Reject Discard Held Messages From:stanley@gmail.com Action to take on all these held messages:    Defer       Accept       Reject       Discard     Preserve messages for the site administrator  Forward messages (individually) to:  Add stanley@gmail.com to one of these sender filters:    Accepts       Holds       Rejects       Discards     Ban stanley@gmail.com from ever subscribing to this mailing list Click on the message number to view the individual message, or you can view all messages from stanley@gmail.com     [1] Subject: Re: Agenda of the December 9 School Council Meeting   Size: 6864 bytes   Reason: Post by non-member to a members-only list   Received: Thu Dec 10 14:38:31 2015  Discard all messages marked Defer list-name-parameter list run by list-name-parameter-owner at lists.uwaterloo.ca list-name-parameter administrative interface (requires authorization) Overview of all lists.uwaterloo.ca mailing lists version 2.1.12

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Handy Mailman Pages in This CF Twiki

(rendered for sample list)

• MailManManagementGuide
• MailManManagementGuideModeration
• MailManManagementGuideModerationDiscardPage2
• MailManManagementGuideModerationDefer
• MailManManagementGuideModerationDiscard
• MailManManagementGuideModerationAccept
• MailManManagementGuideModerationDone
• MailManManagementGuideModerationInstructions
• MailManManagementLinks

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-- AdrianPepper - 2015-12-15