[NCUC E-team] Mailing list management

[Joly MacFie]

I have experience with Mailman, and don't mind pitching in.

j


On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 3:44 AM, William Drake <wjdrake at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks much Tapani.  Is there anyone here who’d have the bandwidth to
> handle this, or share handling this with someone else?
>
> Bill
>
> On Dec 15, 2013, at 8:25 AM, Tapani Tarvainen <ncuc at TAPANI.TARVAINEN.INFO>
> wrote:
>
> > Managing Mailman is perhaps the most important of the e-tasks
> > I listed, given how much NCUC work relies on email,
> > and it needs attention frequently and often rapid response.
> > On the other hand it's also very easy, technically anyone can
> > do it, the primary requirement is conscientiousness,
> > or reliability if you will.
> >
> > It is also easy to share between several people in many
> > ways, but the very least there should be two people who
> > can do "everything", or at least one all-purpose admin
> > and one moderator. Different lists could have different
> > managers, now they're all managed by same people (I and
> > Wilson) and have same password (ncuc1:/root/mailman.passwd,
> > which Brenden can also access).
> >
> > Mailing list management tasks are probably familiar enough,
> > but here's a quick summary with rough estimate of frequency:
> >
> > (1) Allowing or disallowing messages held because of some rule.
> > Common situations are members using a different sender address than
> > the one they're subscribed with, too many Cc: addresses, too big
> > messages, cross-postings resulting in non-members posting, &c.
> > These happen weekly, sometimes more often, even several in one day,
> > and usually should be handled quickly (within the same day).
> >
> > (2) Approving subscription requests. This is much less
> > frequent and tends to happen in bursts a couple of times a
> > year, especially the EC list after elections and the discuss
> > list after admitting new members, occasionally at other times,
> > like when someone changes their address.
> > (The EC list is exceptional in that unsubscribe also needs
> > moderator approval.)
> > And of course if working teams or the like start getting
> > more active using their lists they may increase this, but then
> > it might make sense to delegate subscription approvals to
> > whoever coordinates the team.
> >
> > Mailman has distinct administrator and moderator roles,
> > moderator basically just doing the two tasks above, i.e.,
> > approving or disapproving messages and (un)subscriptions,
> > and it might well make sense to have, say, two administrators
> > for the lot and in addition moderator rights to others in
> > some lists (whenever someone complains about too slow
> > moderation in some list, offer to make them moderator...)
> >
> > (3) Mass subscriptions. I'll mention this separately from
> > the above, as it cannot be done with the moderator password
> > and is technically somewhat different. Not difficult though,
> > usually it's simply cut'n'pasting list of addresses.
> >
> > (4) Creating new lists. Infrequent, never really urgent, easy.
> > The mail system has been set up to recognize new lists
> > automatically as long as they use addresses of the form
> > something at lists.ncuc.org, so all it takes is the Mailman list
> > creation form (http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/create) -
> > no need to worry about editing alias files or whatever various
> > documents talk about.
> >
> > (5) Adjusting list settings, like maximum messages size &c.
> > Rare, usually only needed after list creation, but sometimes
> > needed to handle spam attacks or temporarily moderating some
> > list member who's gone crazy &c.
> >
> > That's about it. There are also some list-related tasks that
> > I've omitted, but they're either one-off things that have been
> > done already (general mail system settings) or such that they
> > usually aren't done at all (like messing with archives), and
> > also technically belong to linux admin (cannot be done with
> > the web GUI).
> >
> > --
> > Tapani Tarvainen
> > _______________________________________________
> > E-team mailing list
> > E-team at lists.ncuc.org
> > http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/e-team
>
> _______________________________________________
> E-team mailing list
> E-team at lists.ncuc.org
> http://lists.ncuc.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/e-team
>



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