[Mailman-Users] Open / Close lists

[Richard Barrett]

On 23 May 2004, at 08:18, Brian York wrote:

> After going through all of that it hit me earlier how it worked. I 
> have been
> using PMDF's mailing list software and it works a little different.  
> You have
> a list of addresses that the messages are to be sent to and then a 
> separate
> list of addresses for people who can post. Then a configuration on if 
> people
> can subscribe themself or not.
>
> That brings me to another migration issue. We have about 600 lists or 
> so that
> are created automatically every semester (university environment) for 
> classes
> and then some that is for all students student organizations and 
> students
> faculty etc etc. Since the list is just a plain text file with email
> addresses they are created via a script and ftp to the VMS server 
> running
> PMDF overwriting the old lists. I have looked at the mailman config 
> files and
> it's a mess.

Before deciding haw bad things are you might find it worthwhile to take 
a look at the programs in $prefix/bin/ that form part of Mailman. Using 
them is probably a better bet then trying to work with pickled Python 
internal data structures unless you know python and want to extend 
Mailman by programming.

Programs like config_list, add_members, list_members, delete_members, 
sync-members etc are quite useful for automating administration tasks 
and, in general, their input and outputs are straight text files.

You can run most of these programs with the -h or --help option to 
confirm their function and command line options. Then let the list know 
which admin tasks are still causing you grief.

Being Python source code, they also can be used as exemplars of how to 
program extensions to Mailman if that is what you decide to do.

> Is there a way to do a similar kind of thing with mailman as in
> having the members in a separate file than the list configuration 
> file. Or
> some solution for automation of list creation.
>
> Thanks
> Brian
>
>
> On Sunday 23 May 2004 02:24, Al Black wrote:
>> On Sat, 2004-05-22 at 16:17, Brian York wrote:
>>> Were are the settings for open and closed lists for mailman 2.14?
>>
>> It kind of depends on what you mean by an open or closed list.  You
>> should look at the subscription rules and sender filters under the
>> privacy options of the list administrator interface, and then select
>> what you think is appropriate for the list.
>>
>> al