[Mailman-Users] Edit a message then approve it

[Kory Wheatley]

I have tried the below documentation for editing a held message then
approving it or sending it through, but it does not work.

Steps:

I forward the message to myself and click on the Reply-to, to bring it
up for editing
and then I edit the message (I'm using netscape messenger to do so). How
do I do this part of the documentation "
- Resend the message to the list using a Resent-To: header containing
the list posting address." There is no Resent-To: header option when you
compose a message in the Netscape Mail Client, so then I put the
Approval Header in the very first line of the body of the message
"Approved:password" which I use the site mailman password. I send the
message off  (which I use the mailman mailing list address), and the
message is sent to me with the "Approval:password" in the first line of
the message, the reason it was not held for approval is because I allow
my subscribed email to post without approval but the message did not
edit properly, because it shows the Approval:password in the first line
of the body. What I'm I doing wrong.



3.9. How do I edit a held message before approving it for the list?

Here's how to do this:

- Use the "forward this message" feature in the admindb page to forward
the message to yourself.

- At the same time, discard the original held message. You may want to
do this later, after you're sure the message was properly
forwarded to you.

- Edit the message in your mail reader. You should include a notice in
the message explaining that the list moderator has edited the
message. Please use proper netiquette!

- Resend the message to the list using a Resent-To: header containing
the list posting address. Also include an Approved: header
containing the list's admin password.

Viola! The edited message should be forwarded to the list membership.

==========

Alternatively, you can edit the actual held message found in
~mailman/data/... The message will be in a file called
heldmsg-<listname>-<number>.txt

You can use "grep" to find the message, and your favorite editor to
change it.

Once you have modified the message, feel free to approve it.

The web-interface shows you a portion of the message that has been
copied into a database called request.db. When you edit the
message via the web-interface you are actually editing the portion
captured in request.db and not the original message.

Approval of the message sends the actual held message from
~mailman/data/..

==========

Note for Mailman 2.1: the second suggestion about doesn't work so well
because by default, held messages are stored on disks in a
more efficient binary representation called a "pickle". Pickles aren't
normally editable. If you still want to use the second suggestion, you
might want to set HOLD_MESSAGES_AS_PICKLES in ListAdmin.py to 0, which
tells Mailman to store them using the older, less
efficient, plaintext representation instead of pickles.

I still don't like the second suggestion much because it is limited to
only those who have access to the system disk and command line.
Also, in MM2.1 the admindb interface doesn't fool you into thinking you
can edit the message, as the text areas are now read-only.

Edit this entry / Log info / Last changed on Thu Apr 18 23:31:06 2002 by
Barry Warsaw

--
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Kory Wheatley
Academic Computing Analyst Sr.
Phone 282-3874
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Everything must point to him.