[Mailman-Users] Mailing problems

[Matthew Davis]

* Mike Dean (mikedean at ntlworld.com) wrote:
> Dear Mailman
> I wonder if you could get back to me at your convenience and let me know
> whether one of your products would handle a problem I have encountered.
> I work with a UK reg. Charity charged with handling an 'e-zine' for a
> group of around 650 legal professionals. Yesterday we sent a 'welcome'
> mail to that list using the email list function of our Raq4 server, but
> one of the recipients had an autoresponder configured which sent a mail
> back to the list saying "im not in...". Unfortunately, her being a
> member of that list, along with the other 600 members she received her
> own response back, to which her computer obviously replied with a
> further "Im not in..." message. Then she got this one back, and replied
> again, ad nauseum. Within an hour the server buckled under the weight of
> what we conservatively guess to be around 33,000 emails, and our phone
> lines melted under the weight of all the other recipients who were
> getting this "im not in,,," message dozens of times an hour. 

Wow.  Glad to see things calmed down.

> Having deleted the email list and gradually purged the system of all the
> mails still queuing, we have conceded we need a more professional system
> for these mass mailings, hence my email to you. I need some software
> that will allow only certain individuals within a list to respond to it,
> any others being discarded, or having some other method of moderating
> problems such as this

Mailman is an answer to most of your problems, you just need to remind
people to turn not let their vacation message post to lists.  After
installing Mailman 2.1 (most current stable version), you will have a web
administrative interface to your mailing lists.  Once there you can set
moderation options.  There are quite a few options to set and change. Visit
http://www.list.org/features.html for a list of most of the features.

You can set the list to member post only, and then set the moderation flag
for everyone on the list (except for thoes you want to allow thru).  Then
when a post is made to the list by someone that is moderated, you will get
an email telling you of that post, then you have the option to
Discard, Allow, Defer or Reject the message.

I think you will like Mailman 2.1.

--
Matthew Davis
http://dogpound.vnet.net/

Another flight attendant's comment on a less than perfect landing: "We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal."