[Mailman-Users] How to configure a list for invitation-onlysubscriptions?

[Mark Sapiro]

Carter Braxton wrote:
>
>I think I'm getting close -- so far I've done the following:
>
>1. Disabled the "-subscribe" email address for the list.
>
>2. Edited the list info page to remove the signup option and
>replaced it with a notice that membership is via invitation only.
>(I found the file to modify is /etc/mailman/en/listinfo.html.)
>
>3. Made sure the list is not advertised on the site-wide web page.
>
>4. Used apache to impose a name and password for web access.
>
>This pretty much leaves the "subscribe" option in the email
>interface as the remaining loophole. I would need to modify
>the Mailman source to remove this keyword, and to modify
>the "help" file that users can request. (Anyone know offhand
>what files are involved?)
>
>Of course I could just disable the "-request" address for
>the list, disabling the email interface entirely. I'm a
>little reluctant to do this, though I expect that at this
>point most users will want to use "thuh web" to manage
>their options.


You really don't need to go to all this trouble. Just set
subscribe_policy to approve or confirm and approve and manually
discard any held subscription requests.

Acceptance of an invitation is not held, so that is not an issue. I
really don't think there would be so many subscribe requests that
discarding them via the admindb interface would be an issue.

If you really want to disable the subscribe email command, just change
Mailman/Commands/cmd_subscribe.py to respond that subscription is by
invitation only. That will take care of subscribe commande to -request
as well as mail to -subscribe and -join.

If you want to remove the subscribe info from the help command, you can
just remove

def gethelp(mlist):
    return _(__doc__)

from Mailman/Commands/cmd_subscribe.py. Or you can change the doc
string in that module to provide an alternate message.

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