[Mailman-Users] auto discard solution

Fri Dec 19 13:57:01 CET 2003

The Problem:
I have been moderating a variety of mailman lists for a while, mostly
members only. The spam wasn't too bad starting off, but now its to the
point where there are 150+ spams sitting in queue per day.

I very quickly got sick of clicking discard 150+ times a day. So I
requested permission to hack mailman. Of course the admin said no.

All I wanted to do was change the default selection from Defer to
Discard making my life a lot less tedious.

The Solution:
Bookmarklets, they are cool little javascript things insert into
bookmarks on your browser. See tip#47 on http://www.mozillatips.com/
orhttp://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/ for more info.

So here is an html doc that will let you create a bookmarklet.

1. Save this to an html file.
2. Open it in mozilla/firebird (are there any other browsers?)
3. Rightclick on "Discard All" and select Bookmark Link
4. Goto mailman admin queue
5. Click bookmark

<html>
<body>
  <a href="javascript:(
  function(){
    var list=document.getElementsByTagName(&quot;INPUT&quot;); 
    for(i=0;i<list.length;i++){
      if(list[i].value==3){
        list[i].checked=true;
      }
    }
  })();">Discard All</a>
</body>
</html>

I have also set a keyword for the Discard All bookmark. So now all I
have to do is enter "discard" into mozilla's url bar and all emails in
the queue are changed to discard. Very very very handy.

I has only been tested on mailman 2.0.4 and 2.1.3  ymmv with
other versions.

So I hope this solution is helpful/useful for some of you. 

Justin