blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html

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   6     <title>Petter Reinholdtsen: listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</title>
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  14  <h1>
  15      <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/">Petter Reinholdtsen</a>
  16
  17  </h1>
  18
  19 </div>
  20
  21
  22     <div class="entry">
  23       <div class="title">listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</div>
  24       <div class="date">22nd October 2014</div>
  25       <div class="body"><p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
  26 alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
  27 operate.  First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
  28 and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
  29 and various options for each email address.  This take a while for
  30 every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
  31 job as a list moderator.  But there is a quick alternative,
  32 <a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
  33 listadmin program</a>.  It allow you to check lists for new messages
  34 to moderate in a fraction of a second.  Here is a test run on two
  35 lists I recently took over:</p>
  36
  37 <p><blockquote><pre>
  38 % time listadmin xiph
  39 fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
  40 fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
  41
  42 real    0m1.709s
  43 user    0m0.232s
  44 sys     0m0.012s
  45 %
  46 </pre></blockquote></p>
  47
  48 <p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
  49 there are no message in the moderation queue.  Every morning I
  50 currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
  51 minutes.  When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
  52 ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue.  It took me
  53 less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
  54 program.</p>
  55
  56 <p>If you install
  57 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
  58 package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
  59 with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
  60
  61 <p><blockquote><pre>
  62 username username@example.org
  63 spamlevel 23
  64 default discard
  65 discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
  66
  67 password secret
  68 adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
  69 mailman-list@lists.example.com
  70
  71 password hidden
  72 other-list@otherserver.example.org
  73 </pre></blockquote></p>
  74
  75 <p>There are other options to set as well.  Check the manual page to
  76 learn the details.</p>
  77
  78 <p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
  79 the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
  80 generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
  81 variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
  82
  83 <p><blockquote><pre>
  84 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
  85 </pre></blockquote></p>
  86
  87 <p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
  88 can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
  89 initial screen dump (the xiph argument).  Using an argument, only
  90 lists matching the argument string will be processed.  This make it
  91 quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
  92 email.</p>
  93
  94 <p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
  95 mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
  96 process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
  97 time I could spend elsewhere over the years.  It truly is nice free
  98 software.</p>
  99
 100 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
 101 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
 102 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
 103
 104 <p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
 105 configuration example.  Also, I've been told that the
 106 PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone.  Not
 107 sure why.</p>
 108 </div>
 109
 110       <div class="tags">Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/nice free software">nice free software</a>.</div>
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