C. Jon Hinkle wrote:
I have been "selected" to set up a Mailman system to communicate with roughly 140 users. I have exactly zero experience with this kind of endevor, although I am not totally techno-challenged.
I need to set about 30 of the users to be able to post and reply at
will. The rest should be able to post and reply, but with some limits. For instance, if someone posts something useful, we don't want 130
postings back to the list saying "Wow! That's cool!" Given the
user-level of many of the 110 with limited rights, such a scenario is
well within the realm of possiblity. These are the same people who
reply to a Department-wide announcement by hitting the "Reply All"
button.
In any event, I can see from the List Admin manual that I can set up
moderators and they would have full rights and set the rest as users and
make their replies be moderated, but having 30 moderators seems
unwieldy. For instance, who would actually moderate the postings from
the 110?
I would set the list up like this:
General options: strip reply-to: yes reply goes to: poster list moderator email addresses: add 2 or 3 moderators here
Privacy options:
Sender filters:
By default, should new list member postings be moderated?: yes
List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted.: Add any additional "always accept" addresses (if any of your 30 "full rights" members may be occasionally sending from alternate addresses) here.
When you add your 110 members, set them all to moderated except for your 30 members who should have "full rights", they will be set to unmoderated status. You could do this in 2 batches, set the list so that new members are not moderated and add your 30 "full rights" members, then set your list so that new members are moderated and add the remaining members. Then the new members going forward will also be set to moderated by default, and you can unmoderate them as needed.
If I set first_strip_reply_to to YES and then set reply_goes_to_List to
POSTER, the reply would go to the original poster, but not to the entire
list? Is that different than setting first_strip_reply_to to NO and
having the original reply-to be in force?
I can set my reply-to with the list address (as I have in this email). When mailman doesn't strip the reply-to (and it doesn't on this list) replies go back to the list instead of to the poster. Of course, your typical "Wow! That's cool!" user isn't going to know how to do that.
In either instance, how do I account for worthwhile replies that would
be beneficial for the entire list to see?
You need several moderators who can approve the held messages in a timely manner. I help moderate several lists (mailman-users is one of them :-) and have found that you need three or more people who check email several times a day to keep the moderated posts from piling up and to ensure that they get approved and posted (or rejected) in a timely manner. Also remember that people get busy, take vacations, etc. so any list needs *at least* two moderators if you want to ensure that held messages are processed promptly.
Am I taking the wrong tack here? Is this better done with something
like default_member_moderation? I could set the flag to off for the 30
and on for the rest and then set the action to Hold.
Bingo.
Then, if the
posting/reply was worth seeing on the list, it could be approved by a
single moderator, and if not then it gets rejected and the poster gets a
notice.
Also consider if your list will need more than one single moderator, and remember to set new members to moderated status by default - it's *much* better to change them to unmoderated after you see that they have clue than to have to set them to moderated after they have posted one or more "Hey, that's cool!" posts back to the whole list.
jc ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/
