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| = Introduction = This document is intended to help the members of a Mailman 2.1 mailing list learn to use the features available to them. It covers the use of the web and email interfaces for subscribing and unsubscribing, changing member options, getting password reminders and other subscriber-level tasks. It also answers some common questions of interest to Mailman list members. Information for list and site administrators is provided in other documents. This document need not be read in order. If you are simply looking for an answer to a specific question, jump to the appropriate place and references to other sections will be provided if necessary or potentially helpful. {{{#!wiki caution For the purposes of this document, we assume that the reader is familiar with common terms related to email (eg: Subject line, body of the message) and web sites (eg: drop-down box, button) or can look them up. We also assume that the reader can already use his or her email program and web browser well enough that instructions such as "send email to this address" or "visit this web page" or "fill in the form provided" are clear. If you are not familiar with these actions, you may want to consult other documentation to learn how to do these things with your particular setup. }}} = Acknowledgements = Sections of this document have been borrowed from the List Administrator Manual found in Mailman CVS, which was written by Barry A. Warsaw, and from the in-line help for Mailman 2.1. The rest of this manual has been written by Terri Oda, and (hopefully soon) edited and added to by members of the mailman community via the mailman wiki at [[http://wiki.list.org]]. Please see the wiki changelogs for more information. Terri has been maintaining mailing lists since the year she attained voting age in Canada, although the two are not related. She currently oversees the mailing lists at Linuxchix.org, as well as several smaller servers. In the world outside of list administration, Terri is doing work with an artificial life spam detector, and is actually more of a programmer than technical writer. Proofreading thanks go to Margaret McCarthy and Jason Walton. = What is a Mailing List? = A mailing list is simply a list of addresses to which the same information is being sent. If you were a magazine publisher, you would have a list of the mailing addresses of all the subscribers to the magazine. In the case of an electronic mailing list, we use a list of email addresses from people interested in hearing about or discussing a given topic. Two common types of email mailing lists are announcement lists and discussion lists. Announcement lists are are used so that one person or group can send announcements to a group of people, much like a magazine publisher's mailing list is used to send out magazines. For example, a band may use a mailing list to let their fan base know about their upcoming concerts. A discussion list is used to allow a group of people to discuss topics amongst themselves, with everyone able to send mail to the list and have it distributed to everyone in the group. This discussion may also be moderated, so only selected posts are sent on to the group as a whole, or only certain people are allowed to send to the group. For example, a group of model plane enthusiasts might use a mailing list to share tips about model construction and flying. Some common terms: * A "post" typically denotes a message sent to a mailing list. (Think of posting a message on a bulletin board.) * People who are part of an electronic mailing list are usually called the list's "members" or "subscribers." * "List administrators" are the people in charge of maintaining that one list. Lists may have one or more administrators. * A list may also have people in charge of reading posts and deciding if they should be sent on to all subscribers. These people are called list moderators. * Often more than one electronic mailing list will be run using the same piece of software. The person who maintains the software which runs the lists is called the "site administrator." Often the site administrator also administrates individual lists. = GNU Mailman = GNU Mailman is software that lets you manage electronic mailing lists. It supports a wide range of mailing list types, such as general discussion lists and announce-only lists. Mailman has extensive features which make it good for list subscribers, such as easy subscription and unsubscription, privacy options, and the ability to temporarily stop getting posts from the list. The list member features are covered in this document. Mailman also has many features which make it attractive to list and site administrators. These features are covered in the list and site administrator manuals. |
This document describes the list member interface for GNU Mailman 2.1. It contains instructions for subscribing, unsubscribing, viewing the archives, editing user options, getting password reminders, and other subscriber-level tasks. It also answers some common questions of interest to Mailman list members.
I (Terri) am currently in the process of importing the 2.1 documentation from latex. It's fairly likely that there will be syntax issues and missing pieces. Please bear with me, and feel free to fix markup if you see a flaw.