Moderating a Mailing List
As described in Chapter 2, list owners can moderate certain list-related requests. Moderation means that you get to look at the operation that someone is trying to perform on your list before the system allows it. With messages, for instance, moderation means that you can read the message before approving or rejecting it, and even modify the message before it is posted to the mailing list.
There are three types of moderation available:
When you moderate these activities, they cannot be successfully completed until you give it your official stamp of approval. This certainly adds to the time required for you to maintain the mailing list, but it gives you complete control, which – depending on the type of mailing list you’re trying to run – can be extremely important.
There are two general moderation methods: through the web interface, or through the E-mail interface. Recall from Chapter 2 that you can set a preference for which of these moderation methods that you want to use. Neither interface offers anything not found in the other, but both have their pros and cons, so the one you use is entirely up to you. Try experimenting with both interfaces to find the one suits your mailing list and your preference.
The advantage to using web-based moderation is that you can easily see all of the applicants or messages that are waiting for moderation in one convenient location. The disadvantage is that these requests or postings will remain in permanent limbo until you get around to approving or rejecting them; ignoring them won’t make them go away.
Also, if you set your moderation preference to Web only, you will receive no notification that new applicants or messages have arrived. On the other hand, this means your mailbox won’t be cluttered with list-related mail. Again, you should choose the method that works for you.
When using web forms for moderation, you always start at the Owned Mailing Lists menu, which is displayed when you select Manage Owned Mailing Lists from the Mailing lists Management menu. To refresh your memory, here’s what the Owned Mailing Lists menu looks like:
Figure 3-1: Owned Mailing Lists menu
Again, whenever you want to manage or moderate your mailing lists, you’ll start at this menu.
To moderate subscription and unsubscription requests in the web interface, click on the Moderate Applicants link for the appropriate mailing list on the Owned Mailing Lists menu. This displays the Applicants to Moderate Form, which is used to moderate both subscription and unsubscription requests.
Figure 3-2: Applicants to Moderate Form
This form includes the radio buttons Approve and Reject beneath each would-be subscriber or unsubscriber. Give each request your official thumbs up or thumbs down, and then submit the form to carry out your judgment. Approved users are immediately added to the subscriber list and will receive your mailing list’s welcome message (if you have specified one), while rejected users are notified (politely) that their request was denied.
If you approve or reject only some of the applicants, the unmoderated leftovers will continue to be held for your future judgment.
To moderate submitted messages in the web interface, click on the Moderate Messages link for the appropriate mailing list on the Owned Mailing Lists menu. This displays the Messages to Moderate Form.
Figure 3-3: Messages to Moderate Form
For each waiting message, the form displays the subject of the message, the sender, and the radio buttons Approve and Reject. You can give each message your blessing or denial by selecting the appropriate radio button and then submitting the form. As with subscription requests, approving/rejecting only some of the messages causes the remaining submissions to be held for subsequent moderation.
If you want to view the actual contents of a message before deciding on its fate, you can do so by clicking on the subject line of the message, which is a link to a Moderated Message Form. This form allows you to read the message and approve or reject it.
Figure 3-4: Moderated Message Form
As with the Messages to Moderate Form, you can approve or reject a message in the Moderated Message Form by selecting the appropriate radio button and submitting the form. You can also click on the Edit Message Text link, which invokes yet another form, the Message Text Form. This final message form is used to modify the text of a message before it is posted to the mailing list.
Figure 3-5: Message Text Form
To modify the message, simply edit the contents of the Message Text field and submit the form. Submitting this form approves the message for posting to the mailing list, so it will immediately be distributed to all subscribers.
The advantage to using E-mail interface for moderation is that you can carry out your administrative duties from your mail client, without starting up your web browser and logging in to Post.Office. You also receive notifications whenever an applicant or message requires your attention, so you’ll never be left wondering if there’s moderation to be done. The disadvantage of the E-mail interface is that you can only see requests one-at-a-time, and if there are a lot of them, they can clutter up your mailbox.
If you set your moderation policy to E-mail only, Post.Office does not hold any subscription/unsubscription requests or messages. Instead, these requests are simply forwarded to you when they are received, and you must submit them yourself to enter them into the system. This means that if you ignore (or delete) these notifications, the subscription request or message effectively goes away.
Unlike the web interface, subscription and unsubscription requests moderated in the E-mail interface are not handled in the same place. Each subscription request generates its own notification, which is similar to the following illustration:
Subject: APPROVE surfing |
As the instructions in the message indicate, to moderate a subscription request you must submit an E-mail message that includes your password and a command for approving or rejecting the subscriber. The approve command is a variation on the user’s subscribe command, and includes the address of the applicant. The reject command is rejectuser, and is also used with the address of the applicant.
To approve the subscription request shown in the example above, you would reply to the notification with a message like the following (and the happy subscriber would be notified automatically by E-mail):
Subject: Re: APPROVE surfing |
If you instead decided to reject this subscription request, you would reply like this:
Subject: Re: APPROVE surfing |
Remember that the list owner password (in this case, scoobydoo) must be specified with the set password command on the line before the actual moderation command.
Notice that in these examples, the List Name is included as a parameter with the subscribe and rejectuser commands. This is required because these moderation messages are being sent to the system-level list management account (list.manager@host.domain). If the original subscription request had been sent to the Request Address for this mailing list, then the notification (Figure 3-6) would have been From: this address, and the moderation reply would be sent back To: this address. As with all E-mail commands, no List Name is required when subscribe and rejectuser commands are sent to the Request Address for a specific mailing list.
If you have any doubts about where to send the moderation message, or whether you need to include the List Name with the command, just follow the directions in the notification message.
Moderating unsubscription requests via E-mail is nearly identical to moderating subscription requests. When the unsubscription policy for a mailing list is moderated, any request to be removed from the subscriber list generates a notification similar to the following:
Subject: APPROVE yachting |
As the instructions in the message indicate, approving the unsubscription request requires you to submit an E-mail message that includes your password and the unsubscribe command with the address of the applicant.
Subject: Re: APPROVE yachting |
You may notice a couple of differences between this example and the subscription moderation example in the previous section. First, the instructions for rejecting the user instructs the list owner to do nothing; this indicates that the moderation policy for this mailing list is E-mail only. Recall that when this method of moderation is selected, Post.Office doesn’t hold any moderated requests, and since – from the system’s perspective – there is no request pending, no explicit rejection is required. Simply failing to approve the request constitutes a rejection.
Another difference in this unsubscription example is that the List Name is not used with the unsubscribe command, as it had been in the subscribe example. This parameter isn’t needed here because the moderation approval is being sent to the Request Address for the mailing list in question. Post.Office understands which list you are talking about, so you don’t need to repeat yourself by giving the List Name.
Again, if you have any doubts about where to send the moderation message, or whether you need to include the list name with the command, just follow the directions in the notification message.
If a list has a moderated posting policy, and the list has a moderation policy that includes E-mail moderation, the list owner is notified whenever a new message is submitted for posting to the list. The steps taken to then approve or reject the message depend on whether you are using the Web and E-mail method of moderation, or the E-mail only method. In fact, these two moderation preferences involve two completely different types of message moderation via E-mail, so you may find this section a tad confusing. Just take it slowly and review the examples for each method before actually trying to use them yourself.
When using the Web and E-mail mode of moderation, the notification of a newly submitted message that you receive contains instructions for approving or rejecting the message. The following illustration shows a sample notification:
To: owner-surfing@software.com |
As the example above indicates, to moderate the message you should send a reply that includes your password, a command for approving or rejecting the message, and the message number given in the notification. These are the only pieces of information required to process the moderation request, which must be addressed to the Request Address of the mailing list. The original message is shown in the notification for you to read, but it should not be included in the response.
The following is a response to the above notification that approves the message:
To: surfing-request@software.com |
The list owner’s Post.Office password (in this case, scoobydoo) is given after the set password command. The approvemail command is used to approve the message for posting, while the rejectmail command (not shown in this example) is used to reject the message and delete it forever. Both approvemail and rejectmail must be followed by the message number (as given in the notification message).
Because this type of E-mail moderation involves only commands, and does not include a copy of the original message, there is no way for you to make changes to the message during this process. If you want to make changes to a message before it is approved for posting, you should use the web forms described in Section 3.1. If you are dead set on moderating messages via E-mail, but still want the power to edit messages before approving them, you should switch your moderation method to E-mail only. This method, described below, supports the modification of messages via E-mail.
As with subscription and unsubscription requests, Post.Office doesn’t save or know anything about moderated mailing list postings when web moderation is disabled (that is, when the moderation preference of your mailing list is E-mail only). It simply forwards these messages on to you as they are submitted, and it’s up to you to post them to the list yourself. As part of that posting, you can also change the contents of the message.
In other words, moderating messages exclusively via E-mail means that only you can post messages to your mailing list; for another user to post a message to the list, he or she needs you to submit the message on their behalf. This is an important distinction, since it requires you to send different information – and to a different location – than is used for the E-mail-based moderation described in the Web and E-mail section above.
When using the E-mail only method of moderation, you will receive notification messages like the following when a message requires moderation:
To: constitution@software.com |
This message may look like a bunch of random stuff, but it only includes one thing: the message that was posted to your mailing list. The body of the message is easily spotted at the bottom of the notification, while the message headers are what take up all that space in the middle. Both the headers and body of the message are required for submission, so you’ll need all of this information.
Rejecting messages with this form of moderation is simple – just ignore them. Since Post.Office isn’t holding a copy of the submitted message, it doesn’t really exist until you submit it for approval. The simplicity of message rejection is one of the main advantages of this moderation method.
To approve the message, you need to send it – headers, body and all – to your mailing list’s primary address, along with your password and the Approved: keyword that indicates that you approve of the message contents. The following is an approval for the message in the above notification example:
To: constitution@software.com |
As you can see, this looks almost identical to the original notification. The only difference is that the line
Approved: thepassword
has been added before the message. When a message in this format is sent to the list for posting, complete with the list owner’s password, the E-mail message contained in it is officially posted to the list.
Although no alteration of the original message was done in this example, any or all of the body of the message could have been modified before posting. This ease of editing is one clear advantage of this somewhat awkward moderation, since the message approvals done using the Web and E-mail mode do not allow for editing of the message via E-mail.
Notice that this approval is not sent to the Request Address of the mailing list, but to the address for posting. Remember, with this method of moderation you are actually posting on behalf of the original sender. Unlike the Web and E-mail mode of moderation, the E-mail only mode holds no copies of a moderated message in Post.Office while it awaits approval, so technically you aren’t approving this message, you’re submitting it, and messages submitted to the list are always sent to the main list address.
Finally, you may be wondering why it was necessary to include all of the ugly headers with the above message when it was submitted to the list. Those headers allow Post.Office to identify the original author and subject of the message, which means that it can be distributed to your mailing list’s subscribers as being sent From: the original author with the Subject: that the author had specified. If you don’t include the headers, and instead just copy and send the body of the original message, your subscribers will get the message From: you, and it won’t necessarily have the same subject.
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