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KB00022805 What do the terms used in Mailing Lists mean?

The Maintainer
This is the person who receives delivery reports and delivery failure messages. 

The Moderator
This is the person who receives messages that are sent by subscribers with the moderation flag set.  It is usually good practice to set the 'moderation' flag on the 'Guest' properties for discussion forums and
for 'New Subscribers' on announcement groups. 

Guest Properties
These are the properties assigned to posters who are not subscribers to the mailing list.

New Subscriber Properties
These are the properties assigned to users who are added to the subscription list via subscription-by-mail.

Properties
o Posts Messages

This person can post a message to the mailing list.  If they don't have this property, a message from them will result in the 'help' file being returned.

o Receives Messages

This subscriber receives messages posted to the mailing list in ordinary mail format, as long as the message passes through their 'filter'

o Receives Digests

Same as Receives Messages, but receives a copy of the digest if it is used.  Users may have both set (and there is no reason to deny this)

o Moderated

Mail from this subscriber, if intended for distribution, is sent to the moderator.

o Administrator

These subscribers can set the control messages,

o Barred

All mail from this user is completely ignored (and not acknowledged).

Even Distribution
If this option is enabled, then Mailtraq selects just one of the valid subscribers on a round-robin basis.  (Useful for help-lines and such).

Filters
Each subscriber may have their own personal filter, and the mailing list may have a filter of its own.  A filter sifts mail by matching criteria according to the message's headers.  A message 'matches' if it meets the filter's criteria.

To have a subscriber that is interested in mail only on the topic 'money', add a criteria of 'subject' and set its value to 'money', and set the 'match' to 'any' or 'all'.

To have a subscriber ignore all mail from 'joe', then add the criteria 'from' and set it to 'joe'.  Then set 'match' to 'none' or 'not all'.

Confirm New Subscriptions
Currently this is only for proxy-subs.  When a user subscribes somebody by proxy, they are sent confirmation details.  They must first respond to this letter before their name is added to the list.

This only happens for proxy-subs made by non administrators.

Strip Delivery Tickets
This will remove the 'Return-Receipt-To' header fields from messages, which prevents all the recipients from returning delivery confirmations to the sender.

Subscription by mail
This allows users to send a message to the mailing list with the subject 'SUBSCRIBE' to be added to the list. Users can unsubscribe themselves with the subject line 'UNSUBSCRIBE'.  Its not case sensitive any more.

Subscription by proxy
This is an enhancement of the above option, where the syntax of the subject line is extended :-

SUBSCRIBE "User Name" send@address rcpt@address [DIGEST] [NODIGEST]
[MAIL] [NOMAIL]

For example,
"SUBSCRIBE "Joe Bloggs" joe@house.com DIGEST NOMAIL"

Will add the subscriber with send and receive address as specified. He'll receive digests but not ordinary mail. This subscription can be sent again to change the properties. These properties will override the defaults set in 'New Subscriber Properties'.

The send address can be different to the receive address when the user wants to receive mail at two different addresses.For example, they might wish digests to go to one account and ordinary mail to go to another.

mailserver Forwarding
If sending subscriptions via the subject line of a message isn't suitable, then you can send them via the hosts mailserver account in the message body.  Note: Only 127 subscriptions by a single message
are allowed.

Simply add the name of the mailing list as the first parameter to the subscribe command, and the rest as normal.

E.g., body :-

"subscribe mailing.list "My Name" my@address"
"subscribe other.list"

Control Messages
As an administrator, you can also send messages with the first word of the subject line (in caps) :-

"WELCOME" Sets the message to be sent to new subscription by mail users.

"GOODBYE" sets the leaving message

"ACK" sets the acknowledgment message (which is sent every time a message is correctly distributed by the list).

"HELP" is sent when blank subject lines are received, and when the user's message cannot be distributed (usually because they weren't permitted to post).

Note: The keyword is removed from the subject line when passed on.

 


Keywords: kb mailinglists
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