Thanks also for the suggestion of setting up a list just to send out moderator passwords. I'll pass that suggestion and the one by Robby on global detection of mailing-neglect back to the the GNU discussion group. I hope that will help. Should they go that route, I'll try to withdraw the sourceforge feature request.
Where I think something inside GNU Mailman could be a little better than a second list is that the integration could enforce that the email associated with person logging in to the webpage or sending moderation by email is also *currently* subscribed to the list***. The theory here is that spammers don't want to receive the spam they spew.
***If I have this correct, where GNU mailman seems to differ from say sourceforge bug and feature trackers is that in GNU Mailman where there is a password associated with a moderator and an administrator *account*, in sourceforge tracker, there is a moderator or administrator *flag* is associated with a account(s) to grant access. So to moderate or administer an account one uses one's selected user account and password. As a result, is easier to effect such an enforcement described above.
I guess sometimes things are not what they may seem initally, so many thanks for the detailed explanation; it all makes sense. It is also interesting to learn that the GNU mailman mailing lists have the same problems as other GNU lists. But it sounds like the GNU mailman lists have very dedicated moderators.
Again at the risk of beating this horse dead, what we're looking for is a way for mailing lists to distribute the burden of moderation such as by having the mailing list be more self moderating as it appears that the wiki works. (I could be wrong here about the wiki.) The observation is that right now, a number of mailing lists at least GNU mailing lists are just getting neglected, and this suggests something is wrong. Maybe it's just a global misunderstanding of how to set up a general help list (e.g. a documentation change), but I have a feeling it's not just that.
I don't know how to or have a suggestion as to how to deal with concerns of the getting discussions to the right user/developer group or what should be indicated when making a feature request. However I do see the wisdom in discussing things in the right venue. After all, what's important is getting ideas and solving this problem, not bothering or using up the bandwidth of the wrong people. So if this discussion should be moved to the user list, please let me know.
Again thanks.