Copyright (c) 1999, 2000 Aurora University, Christopher Kolar. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts specified, and with no Back-Cover Texts specified. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

This document is intended for persons who have the responsibility of managing mail lists that are being run by the GNU Mailman mail list manager. Note that this document is not intended for people who are only list members, and this document is not intended to serve as a technical document that tells system administrators about installing or managing the software. This document instead recognizes that Mailman makes it possible for normal end users to take over responsibility for management of a mail list and attempts to provide them with the information necessary to effectively use the features of Mailman to become self-sufficient in doing so.

 The most recent version of Mailman is available at www.list.org, where there are also instructions on how to join the highly useful user mail list.

Accessing Management Options

This document assumes that you are the owner (alternately referred to as the list manager, administrator, or moderator). When the list was created and you were assigned ownership of the list you should have received an automatically-generated message letting you know what your administrative password is, as well as directing you to the URLs needed to manage the list through your browser. This document will further assume that you have your list's manager's password, that you know the URL for the management settings, and that you have a table-capable browser (Mailman does not use any Java or JavaScript).

When you access your management settings using your list management page you will be prompted for the password. Once you authenticate to the server you will be shown the General Options page for you list and will also see a listing of the other categories of settings that are available. For all of these categories you will be able to make changes using your browser, but the changes will not go into effect until you go to the bottom of the screen and click the "Submit Your Changes" button. Changes will then be immediately put into effect -- nothing needs to be changed or restarted on the list server itself. 

The remainder of this document will talk about each of the settings as they appear in the configuration categories for your list. Note that each list server is configured with different default settings, so this document does not assume that any particular setting will be the default when you look at your own list.

Mailman's general options allow you to specify most of the ways that your mail list will interact with the web server and how it will present itself to the users.  The text in the "setting" should match the settings that you see in v2 of Mailman.  The description content provides a brief description of each setting as well as guidelines for use when appropriate. 

The membership management section allows you to do two things: add/remove users from your list, or adjust custom user settings.

Adding and Removing Members

The addition and removal of members is done thought the membership management screen. When you access this screen you will be shown a table listing all of your subscribers as well as their current member settings. Through this screen Mailman allows the list manager to remove an individual from their mail list, but the method is not entirely intuitive.

Find the line with the e-mail address of the individual that you would like to remove.

1. The check mark in the first column by the user address, labeled "subscr" indicates that user is subscribed to your list. Uncheck the box by the address that you would like to remove.
2. Click the "Submit your changes" button at the bottom of the screen to put the changes into effect.

Mailman allows a list manager to add people for their mail list through this screen, but the method is not intuitively named.

1. Scroll down to the area labeled "Mass Subscribe Users."
2. Type the e-mail address of the individual that you would like to add into the text box. If you would like to add more than one person then each address should be entered on a separate line.
3. If you would like to send a welcome message to the new members then make sure that the "yes" button is checked. This will send the new members their passwords and list configuration instructions.
4. Click the "Submit your changes" button at the bottom of the screen to put the changes into effect.

Note: You will almost always want to send new subscribers the welcome message so that they have their password and the information necessary to customize their configuration.

Note: Network etiquette generally frowns on opt-out lists apart from their common use within an organization for official communications and notices -- adding unsuspecting persons to a list and then telling them that they can leave if they want. Do not use Mailman for unconscionable activities such as sending Spam.

Subscriber Options

In the main table each participants address is shown along with the current options for that user's list settings. As list administrator you have the capability to modify any of the options for each of your subscribers. Modifications are made by checking or unchecking the boxes for each feature on the row corresponding to the subscriber's settings that you wish to change. After making the modifications you need to click the "Submit Your Changes" button at the bottom of the screen to put them into effect.  Note that because these settings are user configurable not all users may have the same settings when you look at this page.  Do not be alarmed, it simply means that they have taken the time to modify their settings.

Mailman was created with the privacy shortcomings of other lists in mind. There are a number of manager-configurable settings that can help in preventing spam, subscription abuse, and widespread disclosure of list traffic to non-subscribers.

Subscribing

Membership exposure

General posting filters

Mailman allows you a good deal of control over who may and may not post to the list. Because there is a bit of good old-fashioned logic involved some people may be confused by these settings. Please see the chart following the descriptions of the settings for an illustration of how these settings work in concert.

Posting privileges explained

The posting privileges settings outlined above actually interact with one another. This chart will help to explain their use so that you can optimally configure your posting privileges. Each box shows who may post for each of the configurations.

Spam-specific posting filters

These are options that affect the normal mail traffic that is delivered immediately and individually to list members.

These options affect the way that the list will process messages that are to be delivered to subscribers in the form of a digest. Unlike other mail list managers, the digest feature of Mailman is built into the package and it easy to activate and configure.

Unlike many other mail list managers, Mailman includes built-in bounce handlers to help the list manager deal with address that have delivery problems.  If you run large lists with dynamic membership then these settings may save you a lot of time in helping to weed out addresses that go bad.

Unlike other mail list managers, Mailman has a built-in archival feature that is easily activated and configured by the list manager.

In the event that you find it useful to gate your list traffic onto USENET, you can use these settings to set up the service. Note that you may need to talk to your system or network administrator to make sure that your news server will work nicely with this list gateway.

A new feature in Mailman v2 is the inclusion of Auto-responder functionality.  This feature allows a list administrator to specify that automated responses be sent in a number of different circumstances.  The top of this screen shows a number of strings that can be inserted into the response text in order to craft responses with text that is specific to the list that is using the auto-responder. 

In addition to the web-based access to list settings, Mailman provides three links at the top of each administrative page for "other" activities.

Tend to pending administrative requests.

There are primarily three instances when you will need to tend to administrative requests.  Whether the administrator is notified immediately for each request or just once per day is dictated by the switch in Mailman's general settings section.  Note that if you have multiple requests pending you can work your way down the page clicking the appropriate action for each request before submitting them all at once.  You do not need to click on the submit action on this page after answering individual requests.

1.  When a posting is held because it was posted by a non-member.  If you are running a list on which only members can post, items that are being held for review will appear in this section for your review.  As the list administrator you have four actions available on this screen.

• Defer the posting, leaving it for a later time or for another list administrator to look at.
• Approve the posting and forward it to list members.
• Reject the posting: the original poster will be sent notification of the rejection along with the explanation that appears in the message box on this screen.  You may customize the message as you see fit or leave it empty.
• Discard the message with no notification sent to the poster.  This is particularly useful for spam. 

When choosing the action you will have two additional options:

• Preserve message for site administrator: this will keep a copy of the message in the admin requests section even if you choose an action other than defer.
• Additionally forward this message to: allows you to take action on the note and forward a copy of it to another person.

2.  When you operate a moderated list, you will use this feature to accept or reject postings following the same guidelines as for non-members postings above.

3.  When you operate a list where subscription requires administrator approval, user petitions to join will be listed on this page.  You should click accept or deny as appropriate.

Go to the general list information page.

Following this link takes you to the list's "public" information page.  This is the page that your subscribers use to log in and modify their settings, it is also the gateway to the list archive.

Edit the HTML for the public list pages.

Mailman allows you to customize the look and feel for many of the pages that are accessible by your list subscribers.  This is nice if you want to take the time to "brand" web pages.  The following pages can be customized:

• The general list information page
• The subscriptions results page
• The user specific options page
• The changing user options results page

When you follow the link to a particular page you are shown the source HTML in a browser window.  In order to make modification you will need to know how to write raw HTML code and insert it in the proper places in the page source.  It is important to note that within the source there are embedded Mailman fields that are inserter on-the-fly when the user loads the page.  You can identify the Mailman fields because they are enclosed in angle brackets and are of the form
    <MM-Field-Name>  

It is suggested that you not make modifications to the Mailman field tags unless you are an advanced user who understands the implications of modifying or removing these fields.

GNU Free Documentation License

GNU Free Documentation License Version 1.1, March 2000 Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA 

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. 

0. PREAMBLE The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others. This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software. We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference. 

1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS This License applies to any manual or other work that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you". A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language. A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (For example, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them. The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, whose contents can be viewed and edited directly and straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup has been designed to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque". Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML designed for human modification. Opaque formats include PostScript, PDF, proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML produced by some word processors for output purposes only. The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text. 

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10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/. Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. 

Copyright (c) 1999, 2000 Aurora University, Christopher Kolar. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts specified, and with no Back-Cover Texts specified. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".