I struggled with this problem until I unearthed this gem from the archive. In addition we were using aliases as moderators, so I thought that was the key problem, but subsequent testing suggests there is no such restriction. Is that correct? So it is alright to use an alias as list administrator or moderator, but moderator recipients must simply know the "trick" of replying to the contained message, not the overall message.

I usually use an "heirloom-mailx"-like MUA and I assumed it was not smart enough to generate correct headers. But now I'm reasonably sure I could create a working response to the sub-message in a number of ways.

I have a means to save a message into a mailbox where I can view it with Thunderbird on my workstation. But I don't really use Thunderbird much, mostly just to look at messages heavy with graphics and other noise. Took me a while to work out that you need to "Open all attachments" (somewhat hidden in a non-obvious menu, and there didn't seem to be a selective option) which would give you a window you could reply to. And voila! I finally managed to get that pending posting to disappear! And after I removed my email address from both owner and moderator boxes, I still seemed to be able to dicard another pending posting.

I struggled so long with this I thought I'd post my dumpster diving and added observations in case it helped anyone else. I didn't find anything like the following in a FAQ.

 Note also, that this moderation message is a multipart/mixed message
 and the part that says "If you reply to this message, keeping the
 Subject: header intact ..." is it's own message/rfc822 part and it's
 that message part you must reply to with the Approved: <password>
 line, not the "outer" message.

Perhaps mention of this should be added. My apologies if it's already there and my web and keyword searches overlooked it.

Now I know what to look for, I find more recent coverage on the list. https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/msg64564.html (May 2014)

Adrian.

Mark Sapiro msapiro at value.net wrote Thu Feb 10 01:58:46 CET 2005

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Pantejo, Barbara FTL wrote:

...

As the list admin/moderator, I received an email to approve a posting to a particular mailing list, but the instructions on approving via a reply email is confusing:

"If you reply to this message and include an Approved: header with the list password in it, the message will be approved for posting to the list. The Approved: header can also appear in the first line of the body of the reply."

What does "header" mean and where on a reply email does it exist? Does "header" mean the Subject line?

Does this mean one of the following?:

1. Clear out the Subject line of the email and place "Approved:{list

password}"

No.

...

2. Reply with the Subject line intact and place "Approved:{list password}"

as the first line of the reply message.

Yes

...

3. Something else...

If your MUA allows it, you can actually add the Approved: <password> line in the headers of the reply as a separate header, not in the Subject:.

...

I tried option 1 and 2 and it did not work. Should there be a space between the colon and {list password}?

2. should work. A space is conventional, but not required. The password

must be the list admin password or the list moderator password. The site password is explicitly not accepted to discourage sending it in plain text e-mail.

Note also, that this moderation message is a multipart/mixed message and the part that says "If you reply to this message, keeping the Subject: header intact ..." is it's own message/rfc822 part and it's that message part you must reply to with the Approved: <password> line, not the "outer" message.

I.e. the reply must be to the <listname>-request address, not the <listname>-owner address, and the subject must be the "confirm long-string-of-hex-digits" subject, not the "<listname> post from <poster> requires approval" subject.

-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan