Maintaining a Mailman List

• Accessing Your List Administration Screen
• Navigating Your List Administration Pages
• Changing Maximum Message Size
• Managing Private and Moderated Lists
• Handling Bounce Error Messages
• Getting a List of Your Subscribers
• Adding and Deleting Subscribers
• Dealing with Problem Subscribers
• Adding or Deleting List Owners
• Deleting Your List

• Informs you that your list is active
• Gives you the URL to use to handle list administration

If you do not keep this email message or can't remember the URL, just follow the steps below.

To access your list administration features:

1. Go to your list's administration page at

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

   where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list. For example, if the name of your list is "foobar", your list's administration page would be at

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

2. Click on the "Log in" link to log in with your UW NetID and password.

Navigating Your List Administration Pages

You can follow each link to access all of your list settings. For more information on the available settings, see the Overview of List Configuration Options page.

Changing Maximum Message Size

To change the maximum message size limit:

1. Log in to the list's administration page at

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

   (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

2. Go to General Options.

3. Near the bottom, locate the "Maximum length in Kb of a message body" field.

4. Change the limit to something suitable, or enter "0" for the maximum server limit of 10 MB.

5. When finished, click the "Submit your changes" button. Your changes are now in effect.

Note: If you have a message that is larger than 10 MB, you will not be able to send it to your list. We recommend breaking up the attachment into multiple smaller attachments and sending them separately or posting the attachment on a Web page and sending only the URL to the list.

Managing Private and Moderated Lists

You can configure your list to require approval by the list owner or moderator before someone can subscribe, unsubscribe, or post a message to the list. Here's how:

• To specify a list moderator who is not the list owner:
  1. Log in to the list's adminstration page at

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

     (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

  2. Go to the General Options configuration category and specify a moderator address. If adding more than one moderator, type each address on a separate line. When finished, submit your changes at the bottom of the screen.

     

  3. If your moderator does not have an @u.washington.edu email address, go to the Passwords configuration category and assign a moderator password.

     

     Note: If your moderator does have an @u.washington.edu email address, he will be able to log in to the moderation page with his UW NetID and password.

• To require approval by the list owner or moderator before someone can subscribe or unsubscribe:
  1. Log in to the list's adminstration page at

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

     (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

  2. Go to the Privacy options configuration category.

  3. To require approval to subscribe, set the subscribe_policy setting to "Require approval" or "Confirm and approve" (the latter requires that subscribers using non-@u.washington.edu addresses confirm their subscription once you have approved it).

     

  4. To require approval to unsubscribe, set the unsubscribe_policy setting to "Yes".

     

     Note: It is not recommended to require approval for unsubscribing.

  5. When finished, click on the "Submit Your Changes" button.

• To have a moderated list that requires approval for postings:

  1. Log in to the list's adminstration page at

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

     (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

  2. Go to the Sender filters configuration category under Privacy options.

  3. Set the default_member_moderation setting to "Yes" and select the desired moderation action in the member_moderation_action setting. This will affect future subscribers. To update moderation settings for current subscribers, go to Step 4.

     

     Note: There are also settings for messages coming from non-member addresses. You can choose to automatically accept, hold, reject or discard messages from all non-member addresses by setting the generic_nonmember_action setting. You can also add specific non-member addresses or domains to the accept_these_nonmembers, hold_these_nonmembers, reject_these_nonmembers and discard_these_nonmembers settings.

     

  4. To update moderation settings for current members, go to your Membership Management page.

  5. Under Additional Member Tasks, find the option to "Set everyone's moderation bit, including those members not currently visible."

     

  6. Set this option to "On" and click the "Set" button. (All of the addresses in your Membership list should then have a check mark in the "mod" [moderate] column.)

  7. When finished, click the "Submit Your Changes" button.

     Note: If your list has been set up as a moderated list, only those messages you approve are delivered to list members. Whenever a new message arrives for a moderated list, a notice is sent to the list owner and the list moderator (if there is one). You can control when you receive the moderation notification (immediately or once daily) by setting the admin_immed_notify setting in the General Options configuration category.

     

• To view the requests requiring approval by the list owner or moderator:
  1. Log in to the list moderator page at

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

     (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list).

  2. Owners and moderators using their @u.washington.edu address should follow the log in link to log in with their UW NetID and password.

     

     Moderators not using an @u.washington.edu email address should enter their moderator password in the box provided and click on the "Let me in..." button.

     

  3. View the summary list of subscription requests, unsubscribe requests, and postings being held for approval.

     

  4. Follow the "More detailed instructions" link towards the top of the page for an explanation of each option (e.g. Defer, Accept, Preserve, etc.).

     You can click on the "view the details" link to view the message body of all of the held messages; use the "view all messages from..." link to view the message body of all messages sent from a single address; or use the numbered links next to each Subject line to view individual messages. Each of those screens will allow you to act on the pending requests.

  5. After you have acted on all of the pending requests, click on the "Submit All Data" button.

• Email messages from owners and moderators are treated the same as all other messages for the list. For more information about giving owners and/or moderators permission to post to the list, see the "Why are messages from the list owner moderated?" FAQ.

• If messages are being held for moderation and you don't understand why, see the "Why am I getting moderation requests for my unmoderated list? FAQ.

• The email address of the subscriber whose email is bouncing.
• The severity of the problem causing the bounce.

If no email address for the subscriber can be extracted from the bounce, then the bounce is usually discarded.

The severity of the problem can be labeled as either hard (meaning a fatal error) or soft (meaning a temporary error occurred). When in doubt, a hard severity is assigned.

Each subscriber is assigned a bounce score and every time Mailman encounters a bounce from this member, the score goes up. Hard bounces increase the score by 1, while soft bounces increase the score by 0.5. However, bounce scores are only increased once per day so even if ten hard bounces are received for the same subscriber in one day, that subscriber's score will increase by only 1 for that day.

To adjust settings regarding bounced messages:

1. Log in to the list's adminstration page at

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

   (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

2. Look under the Bounce Processing configuration category to adjust the following bounce settings:
   • Score threshold: For each list, the list owner can set a bounce score threshold. When a member's bounce score exceeds the list's bounce score threshold, the subscriber's subscription is automatically disabled. Once disabled, the subscriber will not receive any postings from the list until their membership is explicitly re-enabled (either by them or the list owner). However, they will receive occasional reminders that their membership has been disabled, with information about how to re-enable it.

   • Reminders: The list owner can control both the number of reminders the subscribers will receive and the frequency with which the reminders are sent.

   • Info stale: After a certain period of time during which no bounces from the subscriber's address are received, the bounce information is considered stale and discarded.

   Note: By adjusting the "bounce_score_threshold" and "bounce_info_stale_after" setting, you can control how quickly members with bouncing email are disabled. You should set both of these to the frequency and traffic volume of your list.

3. When finished, click the "Submit Your Changes" button.

If Mailman cannot interpret a particular bounced message error, it will be forwarded on to the list owner. The hardest thing to do upon receiving the error message is to interpret it - especially if Mailman was unable to! Error messages consist, for the most part, of email techno-garbage that you'd need to be some sort of email expert to understand completely. You can ignore much of the message as long as you know what's important to focus on. Look for a line that says something like:

Mail could not be delivered to:

What you'll need to do is decide whether the reason is temporary or permanent. Sometimes the best way to make that decision is to wait a few days or a week and see if you are still receiving error messages from the same subscriber. If so, you'll probably want to remove that subscriber from your list. (See Adding and Deleting Subscribers (below) for more information.)

If all else fails and you can't figure out the errors you're getting, don't hesitate to seek assistance by forwarding a copy of the error message to help@u.washington.edu.

1. Log in to the list's administration page at

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

   (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

2. Go to Membership Management.

3. View a list of your current subscribers as well as their mail options. Click on the "Click here to include the legend for this table" link just above the table of members to view more information about the different mail options.

   

   Note: If there are 30 or more addresses subscribed to your list, Mailman will display them alphabetically on separate pages. To view them all on a single page, scroll down to the Additional Member Tasks section on the Membership List page. Increase the number in the Set a threshold of the number of members before split up alphabetically setting and click the Set button.

   

Adding subscribers

To add subscribers to your list:

1. Log in to the list's adminstration page at

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

   (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

2. Go to the Membership Management section.

3. Go to Mass Subscriptions.

4. Select the option of subscribing addresses or inviting them to subscribe. Subscribing them will add them to the list immediately. Inviting them to subscribe will send them an email message and they will have to confirm that they want to be added to the list.

5. Choose whether or not to send a Welcome message to the addresses that you are adding.

6. Choose whether or not to send notifications of new subscriptions to the list owner.

7. After choosing your preferred options, enter the email addresses (one per line) in the box provided. If you want to include a name with each address, make sure each line is in the following format:

   name <email_address>

   Note: Don't forget to include the brackets around the email addresses. For example:

   Joe User <joeuser@u.washington.edu>

   You can also choose to upload a file that contains your subscribers. The file must be plain text. The names and email addresses should be in the same format specified above. Do not upload a Word or Excel file. It is also not a good idea to copy and paste addresses from Word or Excel into the subscription box as this often results in hidden space characters being included at the end of the address, causing the email address to be invalid.

   

8. If you want to include additional text to be added to the top of your invitation or the subscription notification (welcome message), include it in the box provided. The text will be added above any custom text specified in the welcome_msg setting under General Options.

   

9. When finished, click the "Submit Your Changes" button.

1. Log in to the list's adminstration page at

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

   (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

2. Go to the Membership Management section.

3. Click in the box in the first column (the "unsub" column) next to the address of each subscriber you want to delete.

   

4. When finished, click the "Submit Your Changes" button.

OR

1. Log in to the list's adminstration page at

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

   (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

2. Go to the Membership Management section and then to the sub-category Mass Removal.

3. Choose whether or not to send acknowledgement of the removal to the user being removed.

4. Choose whether or not to send a notification of the removal to the list owner.

5. Enter the email addresses you want to remove (one per line) in the box. Do not include names with the email addresses.

   

6. When finished, click the "Submit Your Changes" button.

Note: If you wish to remove all subscribers from your list, there is that option on the Mass Removal page. That option only works if you choose not to notify the users and owners.

Dealing with Problem Subscribers

• Post a statement of appropriate use and conduct to the list.

• Unsubscribe the offending user (see the Deleting subscribers section above). If your list is set up so that only people who are subscribed to the list can post messages to it, this method will effectively exclude them from the list. [Note: If your list is set up to allow open subscriptions, the person could simply resubscribe.]

• If the offending user is a UW student, faculty, or staff, report the inappropriate use to UW Technology by sending an email message to help@u.washington.edu describing the situation and including samples of the offending messages. Unethical use of University computing resources can be grounds for disciplinary action, including loss of computer accounts.

• Add the person's email address to the list of addresses which are banned from membership on your list.

To ban someone from your list:

1. Log in to the list's adminstration page at

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

   (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

2. From the list of configuration categories, select Privacy Options. This will default to the Subscription Rules sub-category.

3. Add the offending user's email address to the ban_list setting.

   

4. When finished, click the "Submit Your Changes" button.

You may also wish to review the Mailman Owner and Usage Policy and Etiquette Guidelines for Posting Messages.

Adding or Deleting List Owners

To add or delete owners:

1. Log in to the list's administration page at

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

   (where listname is replaced with the actual name of your list) with your UW NetID.

2. Under General Options, you will see an owner setting where all of the current owners are listed.

   

3. Edit this list to add or remove owners. All owners must have a valid UW NetID. [Note: It is a good idea to double-check the spelling of the owner addresses.]

4. When finished, click on the "Submit Your Changes" button.

Deleting Your List

If you decide that you no longer need your Mailman list, fill out the Mailman List Deletion Request Form or send email to help@u.washington.edu and ask to have the list deleted.