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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