Mailman FAQ

Top 15 Mailman Questions

Mailman Common Questions

Q	Question	Answer
Q1	What's the difference between a list administrator and a list moderator?	A list admin can control all of the settings for a mailing list, including whose on the list, how it's sent, and what's acceptable to post. A list moderator can handle messages that are held for moderation, ( accept, reject, etc ).
Q2	I'm getting a ton of spam! Help! I don't want to have to reject all this spam by hand.	Privacy Options -> Senders Filters: Non-member section Action to take for postings from non-members for which no explicit action is defined Set to Discard.
Q3	I want a completely open list, so anyone can post.	This is a bad idea. Spammers will abuse this badly. If you must... Privacy Options -> Senders Filters: Non-member section Action to take for postings from non-members for which no explicitaction is defined Set to Accept.
Q4	I want an announce-only mailing list. I just want me and George to be able to send messages to it.	Set up Post only: Before adding any members to the list Privacy Options-->Sender filters, first item By default, should new list member postings be moderated? Set this to Yes. The next item is Action to take when a moderated member posts to the list By default this is '"Hold"', you can set to '"Discard"', often done for a advertising list. Part 2: Setting up the allowed posters. 1. If they're on the list, go to Member management-->Find the person's email address, uncheck the "Mod" checkbox. That person is now allowed to post. 2. If they're not on the list, go to Privacy Options--> Sender Filters Add the non-member address to the textarea box labelled List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted. One address per line.
Q5	On the first of the month ... '"Who is swcp and why are you sending me this message?"'	This is the reminder message giving the list member their password. A list may be configured to do this or not. To check and/or change this option go to General Options. About 1/2 down the page is an item Send monthly password reminders? Set appropriately.
Q6	What mailing list am I on? I threw that message away.	Send a message to help@swcp.com. The NOC group has a way of finding this info easily, but it isn't available to the general public.
Q7	How do I ban a member from posting?	Go to Membership Management, find the email address in question and set the "mod" check box. Then go to Privacy Options-->Sender Filters and check on the settings for Action to take when a moderated member posts to the list and set to Hold, Discard or Reject depending on what you want to do with those posts.
Q8	Archives, what's the deal with them?	By default we turn on archiving and we have no specific quota limit, however large lists will be subject to trimming as the need arises. We will generally notify the list owner when this happens. You should decide if you want your archives to be public or private (list members only). By default archives are public.
Q9	What does '"A non-text attachment was scrubbed..."' mean?	This means the list is set up to do content filtering and someone sent a non-text message to the list and MM quarantined that part of the message. Probably their email client is configured to send HTML mail. If you want people to be able to post HTML, check the Content Filtering section and either set the list to not have content filtering, or add text/html to the list of acceptable MIME types.
Q10	I don't remember my password, can you send it to me?	Depends, are we talking about the list admin password? or a subscriber password. A. list admin - No, we can't retrieve it. We can reset it. Send a message to help@swcp.com B. subscriber password - Go to Member management, find the email address of the subscriber, click on it. You'll be taken to a configuration page. Part way done is Forgotten Your Password? Click on the Email by Password to Me button.
Q11	Bounce processing - what's the deal with it?	MM attempts to automatically process bounces. There is an entire section devoted to settings for this involving a fairly convoluted algorithm for calculating a "bounce score". Mostly you should leave this alone, but we aware that a member can get "suspended" for bouncing too often. If that happens you will see the "Nomail" check box checked for that member in the Member Management section. There will be a B in the reason field. If the reason field is set to A, this means the list admin stopped them from receiving mail from the list. A U means the subscriber disabled mail delivery and a ? means MM doesn't know why but the subscriber isn't receiving email.
Q12	Can I (or you) bulk load my list?	Sure. Go to Membership Management-->Mass Subscription. You need a list formatted with one email address per line. You can cut and paste them into the textarea, or specify a file to upload. BEFORE YOU DO THIS set the Send welcome message to new subscribees? to No! Otherwise you'll be sending out unexpected messages to your subscribers. If the list is > 500 items, ask SWCP to upload the file for you. There are some timeout issues that may result in only a partial list being uploaded.
Q13	I don't see an unsubscribe link in the emails?	MailMan puts some unsubscribe headers in the email, but not all email programs display those. If you want to add an email unsubscribe link, go to Non-digest options and add this to "Footer added to mail sent to regular list members": Unsubscribe email: listnamehere-leave@mailman.swcp.com If you want a website link, Go to Non-digest options. Set '"Should Mailman personalize each non-digest delivery?"' to Yes. For '"Footer added to mail sent to regular list members"', add: Unsubscribe link: %(user_optionsurl)s
Q14	Why did my list post bounce with "Reason: too many recipients?"	Your message was sent to the list as well as many other email addresses at the same time. As part of Mailman's anti-spam provisions it limits the number of other addresses that can be sent to. Work-arounds include just sending the message to your list and then sending a second copy to the other addresses. Or create a larger mailing list incorporating all or most of your other addresses.
Q15	Why did my list post bounce with "Reason: Message has implict destination?	If your list is a member of another list, or if you have use BCC (blind carbon copy) then your mailing list name doesn't appear in the recipients list. This is a common technique used by spammers to Mailman intercepts the message. If you need to do this you can change the setting that requires an explicit address. You'll find this under Privacy --> Recipient filters .