[Mailman-Users] Moving from Yahoo to Mailman

[Mark Sapiro]

Gordon Campbell wrote:

>The question I have is this: how
>does one go about subscribing several hundred users to the new list and
>still maintaining most of their list preferences? (Moderated, nomail,
>digest, etc.) I'm really trying to avoid having to re-set each user's
>settings on setup.
>
>Is there some way of massaging Yahoo's "export list" function output into
>something that mailman's mass subscription function understands? I can't
>seem to find any documentation on this ...

I moved a 300 member list from Topica to Mailman. My job was easier
because no one was moderated and I couldn't find out if delivery was
on or off so all I had to deal with was real names and digest yes/no.

I put the list in a spreadsheet so I coud sort on digest and break it
into a digest list and a message list. The list itself created by
formula in a column of the spreadsheet) looked like

Real Name1 <e-mail1 at dom.ain1>
 <email2 at dom.ain2>
Real Name3 <email3 at dom.ain3>
etc...

Then I set the default delivery mode (digest option) for new
subscriptions to Digest and pasted the digest section of the list into
the mass subscribe window and subscribed them. I then set the default
delivery mode (digest option) for new subscribers to Regular and
subscribed the non-digest group.

You could do a similar thing breaking your list into 4 groups (digest
yes/no X moderated yes/no). Nomail would be more of a problem, but if
the nomail list is short, you could do it after the fact through the
membership list, or you could do what I did and tell the list they
have to do it themselves.

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