Moderating UM-Flint Voluntary Mailing Lists

Intended Audience

This article is intended for the benefit of University faculty and staff who manage or moderate Mailman mailing lists that would like additional information about the management-side of these listserves.

 

Requirements

To follow this article, you must have access to the Postorius management portal and be either an owner or moderator on a mailing list. Postorius is the new application introduced in Mailman 3.0+ for listserve management.

To get to the management-side of a listserve, navigate to the web address below and login with your university credentials: https://list.umflint.edu/mailman/postorius/accounts/subscriptions/

To browse to your list directly, type in the URL that corresponds to your list. Example: https://list.umflint.edu/mailman/postorius/lists/your_list_name.list.umflint.edu/

• Once logged into the page mentioned above, you should see the mailing lists that you are currently subscribed to and moderate. To modify list settings, click on the name of the list and you will be redirected to the desired configuration page.
• On the configuration page, there are several areas that will be of interest to moderators to perform duties. These include Info, Subscription Requests, Held Messages, Members, Settings, and Mass Operations. (Below are brief explanations for each area mentioned.)

Note: We recommend carefully using the options available within Mailman, as any misconfiguration could result in list messages not being sent out. Please be cautious about what settings you change on a production list.

Info

This page will simply display the address of the list-owner and some basic statistics about the list. See the example info page below.

 

Subscription Requests

If a user tries to subscribe to your list through messaging the listname-join@list.umflint.edu address, you will receive a notification to confirm their membership. This area will show anyone who has requested to join the listserve, and allow you to confirm or deny their subscription request.

Held Messages

This section will show you if there are any pending messages to be posted to your list. You will have options to either allow or deny the message as they come in. The default action is to allow messages through if you are a subscriber, but this can be changed later on in the settings area

Members

Clicking on this option will bring a drop-down with the following options: Subscribers, Moderators, and Owners. An example of this section is shown below.

• If you click on the Subscribers page, you will see everyone subscribed to your list.
• The Moderator page will show anyone who moderates your list.
• You can also add additional moderators through this option.
• The Owners page will list your email address.
• You can also add additional owners through this option, though it isn't recommended to modify this area.

 

 

Mass Operations

This section allows you to mass subscribe or mass to remove users from the list. When entering emails to subscribe or remove, enter each email on a new line. An example of this section is shown below.

 

Settings

• List Identity

  This page will allow you to make the list visible on my.umflint.edu/lists To do this, click Yes next to the "Show list on index page" Note: Enabling this feature will publicly list this on the my.umflint.edu page for any active user at UMFlint to subscribe to it voluntarily. Private lists should have this option set to “No” to ensure that users do not add themselves. You may also change other attributes of the list on this page, such as the display name, subject prefix, and description. See the example below.

 

 

• Automatic Responses

  This page will allow you to set up automatic responses to certain events that occur such as:
  • When someone emails the owner's address.
  • Requests to subscribe.
  • When someone joins or leaves a mailing list.

• Digest

  This will control how big the email summary has to be before sending out a digest to subscribed users. The default is 30kb.

• Message Acceptance

  Included here are options that control the actions taken when a member or non-member posts a message to the list. You can also specify a maximum message size.

• Acceptable Aliases

  This area allows moderators/owners to whitelist email addresses (one per line) that can send to the list without being a member. Use this option if you want something to send to the list, but not receive list communications back.

• Archiving

  These archiving options have been disabled for security reasons. We do not hold messages for archives, nor will we enable them per ITS security policy.

• Subscription Policy

  The subscription policy controls if users can join a list by emailing the listname-join@list.umflint.edu address. By default, all lists have been set to Confirm to avoid users from subscribing themselves through this method. The subscription policy does not affect if users can subscribe to the list when it is visible at https://my.umflint.edu/lists
  NOTE: It is recommended to leave the subscription policy to the default of Confirm.

• Banned Addresses

  From this page, you will be able to ban email addresses that should not be able to send to the list. It will also list the currently banned users.

• Header Filters

  This is an advanced section for filtering messages through email headers. We recommend not configuring this section unless you are familiar with regular expressions and email headers.

• Delete List

  This option will let you permanently delete the list. This action is final and all settings and site membership data will be lost.

Troubleshooting

If you have any questions or experience any issues with this article please visit or contact the ITS Helpdesk for assistance.

 

Location: 206 Murchie Science Building

Hours: go.umflint.edu/hours

Phone#: (810)-762-3123

Email: flint.its.support@umich.edu