[Mailman-Developers] Approve subscriptions by email?

[Mike Zimmerman]

New potential mailman user here... one functional requirement we have
that I have not been able to pin down...

- can I approve/deny subscription requests via email ?

Our situation is a large club that has a club roster already, which
contains email addrs for everyone.  Thus we can automate the process
of approve/deny by passing an "approve XYZ" email by comparing XYZ 
against our list.

We have this arrangement working with Yahoogroups already (tho
things get a bit flaky at times...), and while I haven't worked with
a majordomo list in 10+ years, I remember it working this way too.

So far I cannot find anything in the documentation about this, and
searches of the mail archives have turned up only a few indefinite
things. (sorry if I'm asking recurring question #1 or if I missed
something obvious, but I did attempt a thorough search).  I did find:

http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers@python.org/msg00038.html
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2003-July/030023.html

The 2nd one seemed promising, so I tried to subscribe a person to
a test list of mine.  Mailman kicked out an email to the admin addr,
and I was able to construct the group-add URL and thus "remotely"
subscribe the requesting member.. 

http://mail.xyz.org/mailman/admin/test_xyz.org/members?subscribees=me@home.com&&send_welcome_msg_to_this_batch=0&adminpw=pwd

BUT there is (at least) one major problem with this method... it does 
not seem to clear out the "pending" queue... so I'm getting reminder 
emails to the web interface and approve this poor chap ;-)  Also doesn't 
really cover the situation of wanting to "deny" someone's request.

If it matters, my concerns about security are much less than my concerns
about functionality.  Also, in this case, mailman is supplied by my
host and I do not have access to modify the code (no root access).
(at best could set up a forwarder to procmail to something, but
that starts to seem ugly).  Nor are the files of subscribers stored
anywhere within my space to edit them directly (at least not that
I can find).

Thanks,
Mike
-- 
"The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes
from a strong will, and the other comes from a strong won't" 
 - Henry Ward Beecher                                 zimmy at nc.rr.com