Revision 17 as of 2007-06-28 09:04:41

Clear message

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.

Table of Contents:

  1. Introduction

  2. Translating from our examples to real lists

  3. Mailman's interfaces

  4. I need to talk to a human!

  5. Subscribing and unsubscribing

  6. Passwords

  7. Changing mail delivery

  8. Digests

  9. Mailing list topics

  10. Setting other options

  11. Other common questions

Appendices

1 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.

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.

1.1 Acknowledgments

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.

1.2 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.

1.3 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.

2 Translating from our examples to real lists

Often, it's easier to simply give an example than explain exactly how to find the address for your specific list. As such, we'll frequently give examples for a fictional list called LISTNAME@DOMAIN whose list information page can be found at http://WEBSERVER/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME.

Neither of these are real addresses, but they show the form of a typical list address. The capital letters used for the list-specific parts of each address should make it easier to see what should be changed for each list. Although specific list configurations may be different, you will probably be able to just replace the words given in capital letters with the appropriate values for a real list:

|LISTNAME | The name of your list. |DOMAIN | The name of the mail server which handles that list. |WEBSERVER| The name of the web server which handles the list web interface. This may be the same as DOMAIN, and often refers to the same machine, but does not have to be identical.

As a real-life example, if you are interested in the mailman-users list, you'd make the following substitutions: LISTNAME=mailman-users, DOMAIN=python.org, WEBSERVER=mail.python.org. As such, for the mailman-users@python.org mailing list, the list information page can be found at the URL http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users. (These, unlike most of the examples given in this document, are real addresses.)

Most lists will have this information stored in the List-* headers. Many mail programs will hide these by default, so you may have to choose to view full headers before you can see these informational headers.

3 Mailman's interfaces

Mailman has two different interfaces for the list subscriber: the web interface and the email interface. Most discussion list subscribers use the email interface, since this includes the email address you use to send mail to all the subscribers of that list.

The interface you use for changing options is largely a matter of preference, since most (but not all) of the options which can be changed from the web interface can also be changed by email. Usually it is easier to use the web interface for changing options, since the web interface provides instructions as you go, but there are times when people may prefer the email interface, so both are provided.

3.1 The web interface

The web interface of Mailman is its selling point for many administrators, since it makes it much easier for subscribers and administrators to see which options are available, and what these options do.

Every mailing list is also accessible by a number of web pages. Note that the exact URLs are configurable by the site administrator, so they may be different than what's described below. We'll describe the most common configuration, but check with your site administrator or hosting service for details.

List information (listinfo) page

  • Usually found at http://WEBSERVER/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME (for example, http://lists.example.com/mailman/listinfo/mylist)

  • The listinfo page is the starting point for the subscriber interface. As one would assume from the name it's given, it contains information about the LISTNAME list. Usually all the other subscriber pages can be accessed from this point, so you really only need to know this one address.
  • Usually found at http://WEBSERVER/mailman/options/LISTNAME/EMAIL (For example, http://lists.example.com/mailman/options/mylist/kathy@here.com)

  • This page can also be accessed by going to the listinfo page and entering your email address into the box beside the button marked "Unsubscribe or Edit Options" (this is near the bottom of the page).
  • The member options page allows you to log in/out and change your list settings, as well as unsubscribe or get a copy of your password mailed to you.
  • To log in to your member options page: If you are not already logged in, there will be a box near the top for you to enter your password. (If you do not know your password, see Section 6.1 for more information on getting your password.) Enter your password in the box and press the button.
  • Once you are logged in, you will be able to view and change all your list settings.
  • Usually found at http://WEBSERVER/pipermail/LISTNAME if the list is publicly archived, and http://WEBSERVER/mailman/private/LISTNAME if the list is privately archives. (For example, http://lists.example.com/pipermail/mylist or http://lists.example.com/mailman/private/mylist)

  • The list archive pages have copies of the posts sent to the mailing list, usually grouped by month. In each monthly group, the posts are usually indexed by author, date, thread, and subject.
  • Note: Pipermail is the name of the default archiver that comes with Mailman. Other archive programs are available.
  • If the archive is private, you will need to supply your subscribed email address and your password to log in. (See Section 6.1 for more information on getting your password.)

3.2 The email interfaces

Every mailing list has a set of email addresses to which messages can be sent. There's always one address for posting messages to the list, one address to which bounces are sent, and addresses for processing email commands. For a fictional mailing list called mylist@example.com, you'd find these addresses:

  • | mylist@example.com | this is the email address people should use for new postings to the list. | mylist-join@example.com | by sending a message to this address, a new member can request subscription to the list. Both the Subject: header and body of such a message are ignored. Note that mylist-subscribe@example.com is an alias for the -join address. | mylist-leave@example.com | by sending a message to this address, a member can request unsubscription from the list. As with the -join address, the Subject: header and body of the message is ignored. Note that mylist-unsubscribe@example.com is an alias for the -leave address. | mylist-owner@example.com | This address reaches the list owner and list moderators directly. This is the address you use if you need to contact the person or people in charge. | mylist-request@example.com | This address reaches a mail robot which processes email commands that can be used to set member subscription options, as well as process other commands. A list of members' email commands is provided in Appendix A. | mylist-bounces@example.com | This address receives bounces from members whose addresses have become either temporarily or permanently inactive. The -bounces address is also a mail robot that processes bounces and automatically disables or removes members as configured in the bounce processing settings. Any bounce messages that are either unrecognized, or do not seem to contain member addresses, are forwarded to the list administrators. | mylist-confirm@example.com | This address is another email robot, which processes confirmation messages for subscription and unsubscription requests.

There's also an -admin address which also reaches the list administrators, but this address only exists for compatibility with older versions of Mailman.

For changing options, we use the LISTNAME-request address (for example, mylist-request@example.com).

Commands can appear in the subject line or the body of the message. Each command should be on a separate line. If your mail program automatically appends a signature to your messages, you may want to put the word "end" (without the quotes) on a separate line after your other commands. The end command tells Mailman not to process the email after that point.

The most important command is probably the "help" command, since it makes Mailman return a message full of useful information about the email commands and directions to the web interface.

Quick references to the subscriber commands have been provided in Appendices A and B. (These have been slightly adapted from the output of the help command.)