[Mailman-Users] moderation bit silently turns off on some lists

[Mark Sapiro]

Michael McAndrew wrote:
>
>I operate a number of mailing lists.  Some of these lists are announce only
>lists.  The annouce only lists work by setting everyone's moderation bit to
>1 apart from those that have posting permission.  This is done
>automatically by a script that takes its data from a remote database via a
>text file that is created when requested.  (and yes, I know that's a long
>winded way of doing things!)
>
>But every now and again on some lists (its only happened so far on large
>lists) all the moderation bits are set to 0 allowing anyone to post.  Any
>ideas why this would be?


Someone could log on to the admin interface and set everyone off using
the button under Additional Member Tasks on the Membership List page.

Some script could do it.

I know of no way Mailman would do it automatically.


>Below are the script that sets posting permissions [A] and a sample of the
>text file that inputs into this script [B].
<snip>


Presumably this is a withlist script.  I would make the following
change, but it may not help:

@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
+import sys
 from Mailman.Errors import NotAMemberError
 from Mailman import mm_cfg
 from os.path import isfile
@@ -7,7 +8,11 @@
 if isfile('vawupdate/scripts/vaw_wcp.txt'):
   whoCanPostListsVAWFile = open('vawupdate/scripts/vaw_wcp.txt', 'r')
   for line in whoCanPostListsVAWFile:
-    whoCanPostListsData.append(line.strip().split("/"))
+    entry = line.strip().split("/")
+    if len(entry) <> 3 or entry[2] not in ('0', '1'):
+        print >> sys.stderr, 'Skipping invalid entry: %s' % str(entry)
+        continue
+    whoCanPostListsData.append(entry)

 def wcpupdate(mlist):
   global whoCanPostListsData

As far as recommendations for a different way, I would set Privacy
options...->Sender filters->default_member_moderation to Yes if it
isn't already. Then I would set everyone to Moderated using the button
under Additional Member Tasks on the Membership List page.

At this point all members are moderated and all new members will be
moderated by default.

Then I would have the authorized posters post using an Approved: header
with the list's moderator password, but if you wish to have them be
unmoderated, just unmoderate them manually via the admin interface.
Unless the authorized posters change frequently, this should not be
too burdensome.

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