[Mailman-Users] Problem with posts requiring administrator approval

[Jim McNelly]

Greetings,

I manage a five year old, 700 member, fully moderated discussion list and 
appreciate Mailman's user friendliness for myself and our subscribers over 
Listserve and Majordomo lists I have managed in the past.

I have a problem, however with the Administrative Requests Page.  Posts to 
the list in moderated mode are all listed as held for approval because they 
are "Posts to moderated list".  In open discussion mode, I was provided 
with detailed reasons for messages being held for approval.

Specifically, posts that were previously filtered by the Mailman version 
2.0.8 software such as "administrative trivia, too large, and not a 
subscriber" are now all lumped together with the regular member's posts in 
the catch-all "posts to moderated list" reason for being held for 
approval.  Without more detail, I find myself approving messages from 
individuals that are not list subscribers and approving messages that are 
too large, have attachments, viruses etc.  Catching the unsubscribe and out 
of office messages is easy enough, but the other two types of unwanted 
messages are a problem.

Is there a way to keep these detailed filters working in "moderator 
approval mode" like they work in "no-moderator" settings?  Shouldn't these 
list parameter filters work and alert me with a message like "not a 
subscriber" or "message too large" before I, the moderator, see these 
messages under the generic catch-all "post to moderated list" and have to 
figure out on my own whether the message is too large or the sender is a 
subscriber.

A related problem occurs because I can't scroll down on the message excerpt 
content past the first fifty lines or so to get to the main body of the 
message, which is also a nuisance.  I would like to be able to view the 
entire message or at least tell if it has an attachment or not, which the 
size filter should catch.  In the message header box, it often lists 
whether or not there is an attachment, but it is often buried in a bunch of 
message history garbage.  Our problem is that we do not want large messages 
and people are often inserting large pictures or off topic HTML 
advertisements into the content of the message, bypassing the attachment 
properties of mail sending, which is again a problem for our list.  If I am 
going to approve the content of the message, I should be able to view the 
entire message.

There was nothing I found in the archives that addressed these issues.

In summary, here are the key points.

1. In moderator mode, mailman does not pre-filter messages from 
non-subscribers to the list
2.  In moderator mode, mailman does not pre-filter oversize messages
3.  In moderator mode, mailman does not pre-filter administrative trivia 
messages
4. Unwanted message attachments (could be solved by size filter working) 
are hard to spot in the message header (could use an "attachment alert")
5. The message excerpt box in both moderated and un-moderated modes 
displays only 50 lines, not the entire message which could warn of oversize 
images or off topic content inserted into the hidden portion of the message

Thanks for anyone's assistance


Jim McNelly
US Composting Council
Discussion List Moderator
jim at composter.com
www.compostingcouncil.org
www.composter.com