[NCUC E-team] Mailing list management

[William Drake]

That would be extremely helpful, Joly!  Greatly appreciated….

Anyone able to share the load with him?  As Tapani notes, sometimes rapid response is required, so it makes sense to distribute in case of unavailability etc…

Best

Bill

On Dec 15, 2013, at 9:22 AM, Joly MacFie <joly at punkcast.com> wrote:

> 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
> 
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
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