Mailman Features & Management Guide for Stanford Lists

@lists.stanford.eduUsing Mailman Date: October 19, 2006 Presenter: Xueshan Feng http://www.stanford.edu/service/mailman/

Agenda • Why we’ve moved to Mailman? • Feature Overview • For List Administrators / For Subscribers • The Basic Options / All Options (“the kitchen sink and more!”) • Activities for Administrators and Moderators • Adding/Removing/Managing Users • Posting Controls • Moderating • Spam • Archives • Bounce Processing • Command Line Interface (“mm” command) • Activities for List Subscribers • Subscribing/Unsubscribing Options • Using Listinfo • Questions @lists.stanford.edu

Why we moved to Mailman Why the change: (Three Primary Factors) • List owners have requested additional features • Majordomo code was custom to Stanford and required unavailable resources if the feature request list was to worked on at all • Hard to manage the list via emails • The web interface has become the de facto standard for list management and majordomo’s mail interface doesn’t play well with current mail standards in terms of format-handling • Mailman offers better support and performance • While majordomo code has become custom, Mailman has a widespread open source following. • Mailman tries to use and take advantage of current mail and system standards and tools @lists.stanford.edu

Feature Overview • Owners: • WebAuth’ed for Stanford SUNetID users • Listing of Lists Being Managed • Basic Management Interface • Limited set of commonly used features • Designed to map similarly to the old Majordomo-driven @lists web interface • All Options Interface • The standard Mailman interface “branded” for Stanford • Presents all available options in the Mailman system to the user • List subscribers: • WebAuth’ed for Stanford SUNetID users • Able to subscribe via the web or simplified email interactions • New! Some user controls regarding subscription (NOMAIL, digest capability, archive access) @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Managing a List: Options Choices • Go to URL: http://mailman.stanford.edu/ • Click link “Manage the lists that I own” • You will be directed to a URL displaying your current mailing lists Clicking “Basic Options” will direct list owners to basic oft-used options Clicking “All Options” will direct list owners to the Mailman General Options pages @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Basic Options Screen • Links: • Members: subscription management • Owners: administrative access control • Properties: Basic list controls • Clicking on any one of these links gives list owners access to basic list management tools @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: General Options Features • Owners have a variety of features available to them via the General Options page(s) including: • Membership Management • Bounce Processing • Spam filtering • List Archiving (public, list-private) • Web-based moderation controls by subscriber and poster • Access to moderation activity pages • General Control Refinement • Web-subscription controls to offer subscribers • Edit control over welcome messages and listinfo page layout @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: General Options Screen • The General Options page(s) give a list owner access to all Mailman options a list owner can manage. @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Membership Management • The General Options page(s) for Membership Management provide access to existing subscribers list activity controls as well as screens for adding and removing subscribers from the list. User controls per subscriber are listed with membership. Controls to be aware of, in particular, are “mod”, “nomail” and “nodupes”. @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Posting Controls • The General Options page(s) for Privacy Options provide access to various controls on how messages sent to the list should be handled. Mailman introduces the concepts of Accept, Hold, Reject, and Discard. In Mailman, you no longer need a separate list for addresses that are allowed to post to the list but you can still have one. @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Spam filtering • What is spam? • Spam is electronic junk mail, it is also referred as unsolicited email • Spam is generally email advertising for some product/service sent to a mailing list or newsgroup • How is spam identified? • Suspected electronic junk mail is detected by showing “SPAM:###” in the subject line • The number of “#” in the email subject line indicates how confident the spam filtering program is that an email is actual “spam” • The higher the number of “#” the higher the spam identification confidence level (1 – 5) • How does Mailman manage spam? • List Owners can set up filters to detect and delete unwanted spam • Default to delete suspected SPAM is set at 3 (e.g. SPAM:###) @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Spam Filtering: Basic Options Default is set to 3,meaning “###”. Owners can increase or decrease Spam deletion can be activated by going to the Basic Options Screen under the Properties tab @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Spam Filtering: General Options From the General Options click Privacy Options and then click [Spam filters] to be directed to the Privacy Options screen including Spam filtering rules @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: List Archiving Default is set to “No” but may change to “Yes” to activate Archive feature Default is set to “Private” meaning only list members can see archived messages Default is set to “Monthly” meaning archived messages will be categorized monthly @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Bounce Processing The General Options page(s) for Bounce Processing provide a way for list owners to have Mailman automatically manage “bad” addresses in the subscriber’s set. Bounce processing thresholds will vary by list activity and how “clean” an owner wants to keep a list. @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Other Activities The choices on the righthand side of the General Options page(s) provides links to day-to-day activities and to editing welcome messages and the listinfo page. @lists.stanford.edu

Owner: Command Line Interface (mm) • The email “interface” of majordomo is not one of Mailman’s features. • ITS has built a command line interface (cli) so that an owner can do a portion of their list management via a terminal connection (or programmatically) if s/he wishes. • The command line tool is usable from the cluster systems as /usr/pubsw/bin/mm. Try “mm help” for further information. @lists.stanford.edu

@lists – Subscribers • Subscribers will have new and improved features: • Subscriptions are available via a web interface; subscribing via email is no longer required • Easy digesting – Subscribers may set up to receive the day’s list mail in a single message instead of one at a time (Majordomo does not have this feature per user) • Activity controls • A subscriber will continue to be on a list but can set commands to not receive mail while out of the office (i.e. vacation) @lists.stanford.edu

Subscribing to a List • Via Web: Point subscribers to the list’s “listinfo” URL: http://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/listname Enter email address Click subscribe • Via Email: Send mail to: • <listname>-join@lists.stanford.edu (e.g. techbriefing-join@lists.stanford.edu) That’s all there is to it! @lists.stanford.edu

Migration notes: @lists.stanford.edu “Most list properties remain the same” Still use listname@lists.stanford.edu as the list address. Some things for the list owner to check after migration: • Moderation “gotcha”: If list member AND address set to be allowed to post – make sure list member is not set to moderated! • Headers and footers settings for correct instructions (Majordomo vs. Mailman) • May need to revise documentation and/or the Welcome Message Mailman lists must be owned and moderated via SUNet ID @lists.stanford.edu

Q & A Session Questions? Further questions: - FAQ: http://faq.stanford.edu/ (go to email category) - @lists Services and/or Mailman in general: Submit a HelpSU request to http://helpsu.stanford.edu?pcat=mailman • Majordomo to Mailman migration: • Project Page(s): http://www.stanford.edu/dept/its/projects/mailman/ • Send email to: email-migration@lists.stanford.edu @lists.stanford.edu

Mailman Features & Management Guide for Stanford Lists