STC Mailman List Training

This page includes the following:

How to request, set up, and use a Mailman announcement or discussion list

Help for subscribers to the Mailman lists

Welcome new members to achieve a high subscription rate

Maintain a list

Additional information

If you have questions about this training please write to ann@annlwiley.com. The numbers are for convenience in referring to the procedures.

Training documents for the Lyris lists are identified on another page.

The default confirmation and welcome messages and invitation for Mailman lists are provided on a separate page. Also included is the Welcome message used by the Central New York chapter.

(1) How to request, set up, and use a Mailman announcement or discussion list

This is a lengthy document on a separate page.

The setup procedure applies to both discussion and announcement lists. If you are setting up an announcement list, review all the list settings and perform the following specific steps:

  1. Click the link for the administrative interface.
  2. Enter the administrative password.
  3. When the administration page opens, in the General Options, set send_welcome_message to "No."
  4. In General Options, set include_list_post_headers to "No."
  5. Scroll to Membership Management--Mass Subscription.
  6. Select Subscribe to add the subscribers to the list with no confirmation message.
  7. Select No to avoid sending welcome messages.
  8. In the first text box, paste the email address of each subscriber to add, one per line.
  9. Leave the second text box blank.
  10. Click the Submit button.
  11. Navigate to Membership Management--Membership List.
  12. Select On to Set everyone's moderation bit, including those members not currently visible > Click Set.
  13. Clear the mod check box for the subscriber(s) who will be posting to the announcement list > Click Submit.
  14. When you are ready, post the announcement to the list.
  15. At your convenience, purge the subscribers so you can subscribe the current members of your group for the next announcement. You can do this at Membership Management -- Mass Removal by pasting the addresses you subscribed in the appropriate text box.

Help for subscribers to the Mailman lists

(2) HOW TO SUBSCRIBE TO A MAILMAN LIST

(3) HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM A MAILMAN LIST

(4) HOW TO CHANGE YOUR SETTINGS ON A MAILMAN LIST

(5) WHEN YOU WILL BE AWAY DISABLE MAIL DELIVERY FOR YOURSELF

This is REQUIRED to prevent your autoreply from spamming posters to the list. If you do not set yourself to receive no mail, a list administrator may do it.

(6) HOW TO SEARCH THE ARCHIVE OF A MAILMAN LIST

You can select what to Match, the Format and order to Sort by. You can also browse the archive for any month sorted by Thread, Subject, Author, or Date.

Welcome new members to achieve a high subscription rate

(7) HOW TO WELCOME NEW MEMBERS AND SIMULTANEOUSLY INVITE MEMBERS TO JOIN THE MAILMAN LIST

  1. Click the link for the administrative interface.
  2. Enter the administrative password.
  3. When the administration page opens, scroll to Membership Management--Mass Subscription.
  4. Select Invite to send a confirmation message to each new subscriber.
  5. Select Yes to Send welcome messages.
  6. In the first text box, paste the email address (Firstname Lastname) of each subscriber to invite, one per line. Note: If necessary, subscribe members by pasting the email addresses only. They will be prompted for their names.
  7. In the second text box, type the text to put at the top of the invitation. The invitation is generated by the server and it starts like this: 'Your address "ann@annlwiley.com" has been invited to join the
    Stc_yourlistname mailing list at mailman.stc.org by the Stc_yourlistname mailing list owner. You may accept the invitation by simply replying to this
    message, keeping the Subject: header intact.'
  8. Click the Submit button.

At step (7), be sure to add text like this: Welcome to the NAME SIG of STC. For information about the activities of the SIG and how to participate, please visit URL. Please click Reply and then click Send as explained below, to join the email discussion list so you will hear regularly from your SIG.

Please note that at the time of writing, a Reply to a confirmation message bounces from the STC Mailman server. This will be resolved. The other methods of confirming work. August 24, 2006.

(8) HOW TO CUSTOMIZE THE CONFIRM MESSAGE

The confirm message is generated by the list server and can not be customized.

(9) HOW TO CUSTOMIZE THE WELCOME MESSAGE

You can customize the welcome message for mass subscriptions as explained for procedure (7).

To customize the Welcome message that is sent to new subscribers who ask to join the list:

  1. Click the link for the administrative interface.
  2. Enter the administrative password.
  3. When the administration page opens, in the General Options at welcome_msg type the text to add at the beginning of the Welcome message if any.
  4. To edit the Welcome message, on the administrative interface click "Edit the public HTML pages and text files." Then click "Welcome email text file." Make the changes and save.

Tests have shown that users believe they need to respond to the default Welcome message. You may want to rearrange some of the information to make the message clearer. The message used by the Central New York chapter of STC is posted on the Mailman messages page.

(10) HOW TO CUSTOMIZE THE GOODBYE MESSAGE

  1. Click the link for the administrative interface.
  2. Enter the administrative password.
  3. When the administration page opens, in the General Options at goodbye_msg type the text of the goodbye message. If you enter no text, the goodbye message is blank with the subject line "You have been unsubscribed from the Stc_yourlistname mailing list." You may want to enter text to encourage people to stay on the list and select the digest, or to rejoin the list or stay in STC.

Maintain a list

(11) HOW TO APPROVE OR REJECT A NEW MAILMAN LIST SUBSCRIBER

As the administrator or moderator of the list, you will receive an email for each new subscriber if you have set up the list to require approval of subscribers.

  1. Follow the link in the list to the web page for approving or rejecting subscribers.
  2. Enter the administrative or moderators' password.
  3. On the requests page, select all the actions you want to take.
  4. Click the Submit button at the bottom to submit all actions at once.

(12) HOW TO PREVENT AUTOREPLIES FROM REACHING SUBSCRIBERS OR THE MAILMAN LIST

  1. Click the link for the administrative interface.
  2. Enter the administrative password.
  3. When the administration page opens, scroll to Membership Management -- Membership List.
  4. Find the email address of the member whose autoreply has reached a poster or the list.
  5. For that subscriber, select nomail (a reason will appear) > Click Submit.

(13) HOW TO PURGE SUBSCRIBERS FROM A MAILMAN LIST

If you want to maintain a members-only list, you must determine the difference between the list subscribers and the members of your chapter or SIG. The procedure for doing that is posted, but lacks an automated method of producing a list of addresses to remove. Please note that the steps to retrieve the list of subscribers and the steps at the end of this procedure are for Lyris lists.

To retrieve a list of the subscribers for a Mailman list, send an email message to the request address for your list. In the subject include the command "who password" without the quotes and using your actual administrative or moderators' password. The list is returned in the form emailaddress (Firstname Lastname).

Here are the steps to remove subscribers for Mailman.

This is also the procedure for purging an announcement list, where the addresses to remove are the ones you subscribed.

Once you have the email addresses to remove:

  1. Click the link for the administrative interface.
  2. Enter the administrative password.
  3. When the administration page opens, scroll to Membership Management--Mass Removal.
  4. Leave both notifications set to "No."
  5. In the text box paste the addresses to remove, one address per line.
  6. Click Submit.

(14) HOW TO PLACE A SUBSCRIPTION ON MODERATED STATUS TO BLOCK A SUBSCRIBER FROM POSTING TO A MAILMAN LIST WITHOUT APPROVAL

  1. Click the link for the administrative interface.
  2. Enter the administrative password.
  3. When the administration page opens, scroll to Membership Management--Membership List.
  4. Find the email address of the member whose posts you want to moderate before the posts appear.
  5. Select mod for that member > Click Submit.

You can also set all list members to have their posts moderated by clicking On and Set for the moderation bit. This is used for announcement lists or could be used to close a list to posts for a "cooling off period."

Additional information

http://mailman.stc.org/mailman/listinfo identifies the STC Mailman lists.

http://www.stc.org/list_request/list_faq.asp provides FAQs on the Lyris lists at the time of writing (August 24, 2006).

http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/docs.html is documentation for Mailman list administrators.

http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html is documentation for Mailman list users.

Acknowledgements

The STC list provider supplied the detailed information needed to complete the instructions.