[Mailman-Users] member_posting_only

[Heather Madrone]

At 6:17 PM -0400 4/19/05, kalin mintchev wrote:
>thanks Dan. i disagree thought. i don't see how you'd recognize a member
>of the list except by the email address. how'd you possibly know that the
>email address that's in the From header on the message you are about to
>approve belongs to one of that list's members if it's not on the list? ok
>- unless the list is for your family members or closest friends and your
>know all their alternative email addresses.... in 2.0 you can not even
>relate names to addresses.

I run a list with 800 subscribers, and it's often blindingly obvious when
a message in the held queue is from a list-member's alternate email
address.  For one thing, the subject header often contains Re:[List]
and tends to be on-topic.  For another thing, the alternate email
addresses are quite often very similar to the subscription address.
When all else fails, I can look at the sign-off on the message to see
who it is.

Yes, this means that I (or a moderator) needs to read through the
held queue and rescue any stray messages, but it only takes a few
minutes a day.

I think holding questionable messages is the best default because it
allows the list-owner to remedy the situation.  If the default was to
discard, you might miss some gems.

I know that a lot of folks out there are intimidated by Mailman, and
so I try to make it easy for them.  If they make a mistake, I go ahead
and take care of things, if I can figure out what they were trying to
do.

-- 
Heather Madrone  (heather at madrone.com)  http://www.madrone.com

A rolling stone gathers no mass.