[Mailman-Users] Newbie comments/questions

[Mark Sapiro]

Peter Davis wrote:
>
>I just inherited ownership of a Mailman 2.1.5 list, my first exposure to 
>Mailman, though I've run lists on majordomo, Yahoo!, etc.  I've checked 
>the FAQ, but didn't find answers to these:
>
>1) If my list is set so that only members can post, and I have a spam 
>filter set up to hold messages whose subject line contains, for example, 
>the word "spam,"  why do non-member messages with "spam" in the subject 
>get put in the approval queue?  Shouldn't the non-member filter take 
>precedence over the "spam" filter, and reject the message without 
>requiring moderator intervention?  Is there a way to set that?


I assume you are using header_filter_rules, not bounce_matching_headers.

Here's the story. Various things are done in a 'pipeline' of handler
modules.

Membership tests are done in 'Moderate'.
header_filter_rules are checked in 'SpamDetect.
bounce_matching_headers are checked in 'Hold'

The order of these modules in the pipeline is set by default via the
definition of GLOBAL_PIPELINE in Defaults.py. There are several other
modules, but the default order of the above three is 'SpamDetect',
'Moderate', 'Hold'.

Since by default, membership tests are done before
bounce_matching_headers, you could use bounce_matching_headers to hold
the spam and the test will be done after membership.

You can continue to use header_filter_rules and reorder the pipeline so
'SpamDetect' comes after 'Moderate'. See
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.067.htp>
which addresses a different issue, but will give hints as to how to
reorder the pipeline for a single list or all lists. Note that
reordering the pipline requires a level of access to the Mailman
server that you may not have.


>2) Is there a way to set up a filter to catch messages with a blank 
>subject line?  I tried "subject:\s$", but this did nothing.


In header_filter_rules, the pattern

 ^subject:\s*$

should work. In bounce_matching_headers

 subject: ^\s*$

should work. I don't think either of these will catch a post with no
Subject: header at all though.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan