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GNU Mailman is a GNU software mailing list manager. It is written in Python, integrates with sendmail, and comes with a web-based interface that allows different owners for each mailing list to manage the settings of the individual list on their own.

GNU Mailman is the mailing list manager used by Novell Forge.

Contents 1 Installing Mailman 2 Creating Mailing Lists 3 Administering Mailing Lists 3.1 Managing User Subscriptions 3.2 Controlling Spam

Installing Mailman

Creating Mailing Lists

Administering Mailing Lists

Mailing lists in GNU Mailman are set up with some default settings that you may want to change. Below are recommended a few of the areas you may want to change or modify in order to more tightly control your mailing lists.

Managing User Subscriptions

Here are a few recommended steps to put tighter control on your mailing list subscriptions:

• Add the requirement of approval to subscriptions. This is done in the section Privacy options->Subscription rules. Where it says, "What steps are required for subscription?", set this attribute to "Confirm and approve."
• Limit member exposure. Make sure that subscribing to your list doesn't put the user's e-mail address out there for others to spam. In the section Privacy options->Subscription rules, change the setting for "Who can view subscription list?" to either List members or List admin only. Also, make sure that "Show member addresses so they're not directly recognizable as email addresses?" is set to "Yes".

Controlling Spam

Spam is a sad reality of the Internet; the only way to truly avoid it altogether is to not use the Internet. However, GNU Mailman does have some features that make it possible for you to control the amount of spam you get on your mailing list.

You may wish to implement these features up front, or you may wish to wait until you have a spam problem to take these steps.

• Emergency moderation. GNU Mailman allows you to quickly begin moderating all the traffic on the list with a single setting. In the section General Options, look for the setting "Emergency moderation of all list traffic" and set that to "Yes". This is a good choice for controlling a flamewar, or for temporarily stopping spam until you figure out a better way to take care of it.
• Limit list exposure. By default, GNU Mailman includes a page that lists every mailing list on the server. You can tell GNU Mailman not to include your mailing list in this master list. In the section Privacy options->Subscription rules, change setting for "Advertise this list when people ask what lists are on this machine?" to "No."
• List banned e-mail addresses. GNU Mailman allows you to ban traffic on your list by e-mail address if you prefer. In the section Privacy options->Subscription rules, add the e-mail addresses to the text box labeled "List of addresses which are banned from membership in this mailing list."
• Traffic moderation rules. If you like, there are a few different settings for traffic moderation that you can employ.
  • These options are in the section Privacy options->Sender filters:
    • You can set "By default, should new list member postings be moderated?" to "Yes" which will automatically moderate traffic from new members instead of allowing it directly into the list.
    • You can disallow traffic from non-subscribed members by setting "Action to take for postings from non-members for which no explicit action is defined" to one of "Hold", "Discard", or "Reject".
    • This section also includes other areas where you can specifically override these default actions for specific e-mail addresses if you like.
  • These options are in the section Member Management->Membership List:
    • You can moderate traffic from all subscribed members by setting "Set everyone's moderation bit, including those members not currently visible" to "Yes".
    • You can moderate traffic from specific members by checking the box under the "mod" heading for the appropriate member and then clicking "Submit Your Changes".
    • You can also unsubscribe members from your list by checking the box under the "unsub" heading for the appropriate member and then clicking "Submit Your Changes".
• Controlling spam to -owner. You should be aware that if you are the owner of a mailing list (meaning, your e-mail is listed in the General Options section in the text box next to the label "The list administrator email addresses"), you can receive e-mail at the <mailinglistname>-owner e-mail address even if you have moderated all of the e-mail traffic on the list. There isn't a whole lot you can do about this within GNU Mailman (hopefully your service provider can take care of it).

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