[Mailman-Users] How can I set *@aol.com to nomail or sendinvitations to same

[Mark Sapiro]

ShiroTora Admin Account wrote:

>I have 2300+ AOL users on a client list, all but about 500 or so are 
>unconfirmed users (never opted back in) from my old mailing program 
>(PHPlist).  Unfortunately I don't have a simple way (that I know of) to 
>export a list of either the unconfirmed users only, or opposite, a list 
>w/o the unconfirmed on it.  Unless there is a way via command line..
>
>Anyway more to the point, I am almost thinking along the lines of 
>sending out an "invitation" to all the aol.com emails (and having users 
>opt in once more). or else, just set all the emails to nomail.  When I 
>look at the membership management I can search @aol.com, but it only 
>shows 1 letter at a time, and even then I still have to go 1 at a time. 
>
>Can I either via command line or via web admin do either of these?  
>Preferably invites as that would set them all to nomail wouldn't it? 

I'm confused as to the exact state of affairs here. Are these 2300+ AOL
users currently members (subscribers) of a Mailman list? If, so, they
are not "unconfirmed".

When you "invite" users to join a list, they are not actually
subscribed until they respond to the invitation. They will not be on
the membership list. The invitation is good for PENDING_REQUEST_LIFE
which is 3 days unless changed in mm_cfg.py, after which it expires
and is deleted from the pending database.

If you "mass subscribe" and subscribe rather than invite them, they are
subscribed without further confirmation even if normal subscription
requires confirmation.

So there is no such thing as list of the members (subscribers) who are
"unconfirmed" or the complement thereof since there is no such thing
as an unconfirmed member since people who have been invited or
requested subscription with confirmation required are not members
until they have confirmed.

If the list already exists and the 2300+ are on it, you can't re-invite
them or require them to re-confirm without removing them first.

You could create a bin/withlist script to set all @aol.com addresses to
nomail. That is easy, but if you only want to do some and not all
@aol.com addresses, I don't see a way to distinguish the groups based
on what is available in a Mailman list.

You could also use bin/list_members to list all the members and select
all the @aol.com members from that and then use Mass Removal to remove
them all and then Mass Subscription to re-invite them, if that would
do what you want.

--
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan