[Mailman-Users] Analysis of list configuration

[Margaret Levine Young]

I'm one of the site managers of a ListProc site that may be moving to
MailMan. (I'm the person who holds the list managers' and subscribers'
hands.) We have almost 200 lists with about 16,000 subscribers total.

I would like to be able to find out all the lists that are managed by a
particular manager, all the lists that are moderated, all the list that are
set to allow non-subscribers to post, all the closed lists, all the lists
that have had configuration changes in the last week -- you get the
picture. I want to query the database of list configuration data.

I'm looking for ideas for how best to do this. Right now I have a demented
system that sends e-mail to ListProc, gets list configuration reports back,
and reads the e-mail messages from Eudora into a Microsoft Access database.
I'd like to switch to a Linux-based system. I'm thinking of learning
Python, Perl, or Tcl, learning how the list configuration info is stored by
MailMan, and writing some scripts to read the configuration data, summarize
it, and create reports in HTML. Does that sound right? Is there a more
sensible way?

Thanks in advance for your help! If I produce anything remotely useful,
I'll be happy to share it.


Margy Levine Young <margy at gurus.com>
Coauthor of "The Internet For Dummies" <http://net.gurus.com> and "Poor
Richard's Building Online Communities" <http://www.topfloor.com>. Looking 
for kids' videos? Check out <http://www.greattapes.com>