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

• (rendered for 'sample' list)

Discussion of the Discard option

Discard is, unfortunately, actually the option which should be chosen most often. It avoids sending replies to potentially harmful email addresses. Sending a reply to an actual spammer is not desirable because it will give them information about the existence of the mailing list as well as details of its implementation. And, in other cases, the addresses used often do not accept mail anyway, and resources are wasted in failed attempts to communicate with them.

Example

The following represents the web page you may sometimes see at

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

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

The unlikely nature of the poster addresses, combined with the details of the subjects (first, selling junk watches; second, everyone on the mailing list got the same traffic ticket?), identifies these as unsolicited email ("spam"). Which is why these posts should be marked with "Discard", and the form submitted to discard them.

That is, you want to find the "radio buttons" which look somewhat like the following:

And select the button underneath "Discard" so the result looks like the following:

The other check boxes and entry fields are mostly not worth dealing with. There is no point in filtering or banning the email address because they will use a new address next time anyway.

The only thing you might want to consider is to check the Forward messages (individually) to: checkbox. Fill in your own email address if the other moderators do not want the noise of such postings.

Preserve messages for the site administrator should be done only in the case of extremely malicious messages.

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

Sample Page

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)

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 Held Messages From:oosti623@tele2.nl Action to take on all these held messages:    Defer       Accept       Reject       Discard     Preserve messages for the site administrator  Forward messages (individually) to:  Add oosti623@tele2.nl to one of these sender filters:    Accepts       Holds       Rejects       Discards     Ban oosti623@tele2.nl from ever subscribing to this mailing list Click on the message number to view the individual message, or you can view all messages from oosti623@tele2.nl     [1] Subject: Best watches in the world.   Size: 165754 bytes   Reason: Post by non-member to a members-only list   Received: Tue Dec 1 06:56:25 2015 From:roger.harrison@redoqsqlserver2.info Action to take on all these held messages:    Defer       Accept       Reject       Discard     Preserve messages for the site administrator  Forward messages (individually) to:  Add roger.harrison@redoqsqlserver2.info to one of these sender filters:    Accepts       Holds       Rejects       Discards     Ban roger.harrison@redoqsqlserver2.info from ever subscribing to this mailing list Click on the message number to view the individual message, or you can view all messages from roger.harrison@redoqsqlserver2.info     [1] Subject: Indebted for driving on toll road #0000476860   Size: 6012 bytes   Reason: Post by non-member to a members-only list   Received: Tue Dec 1 05:24:24 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

Handy Mailman Pages in This CF Twiki

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

-- AdrianPepper - 2015-12-14