Title: Can Mailman ignore vacation messages?

Question: Subscribers' vacation messages are being distributed to my
Mailman list. Can I configure the list to ignore these messages?

Answer:

Mailman currently ignores any message marked with a "Precedence: Bulk"
header which some vacation programs add to vacation messages. If the
vacation message does not contain such a header, however, you will need to
manually configure your Mailman list to moderate (but not ignore) certain
messages based on other information such as keywords in the Subject line.

To do so, log in to your list's admin pages at

	https://mailman.u.washington.edu/mailman/admin/listname

where "listname" is replaced with the actual name of your list. Once you
are logged in, follow the links to the Privacy Options -> Spam filters
section. There you will find the "bounce_matching_headers" setting which
will already contain some values. Add the following line in the text box:

Subject: .*keyword

where "keyword" is replaced with typical vacation subject line text. For
example,

Subject: .*vacation

will catch all messages with the word "vacation" in the subject line.
Another typical subject line for a vacation message is "Out of office" so
you could also add

Subject: .*out of .*office

Note that the ".*" needs to be included in the text - it tells Mailman
that there can be additional text that you have not specified (e.g. "Out
of office" as well as "I'm out of the office" will be caught by the spam
filter).

When you are finished adding lines to the filter, click on the "Submit
Your Changes" button at the bottom of the screen.

When a message is received by the list that matches any of the lines
specified in the spam filter, Mailman holds the message so it is not
distributed to the entire list and sends a moderation notice to the list
owner.


Date: 06/2003  Author: R. Skiver Thompson