[Mailman-Users] A rare moment

[skip at pobox.com]

    Mark> With 60 or so lists and 12,000+ subscribers around the

    Mark> globe it is easy to get behind.  I've seen 10,000 or more

    Mark> held messages at times.  Today, though:

    Mark> 

    Mark> autox /local/mailman/teamnet/data  131 :: ls held*

    Mark> ls: No match.


Mark,

That's a pleasant sight, I agree.  (I'm a former member of both the triumphs
and british-car lists, though not for several years.  I appreciate all the
time and effort you put into maintaining team.net.)

I help manage the python.org mailing lists.  In fact, I came across your
mail while doing a bit of backend triage this evening.

To help with the process, a couple years ago I wrote a script to help me
quickly process held messages:

    http://www.smontanaro.net/python/mmfold.py

I invoke it from a shell function which executes it once for each list I
admin or moderate:

    mmcheck () 
    { 
	for url in
	http://mail.python.org/mailman/admindb/pydotorg-checkins?admpw=XXXXXX
	http://mail.python.org/mailman/admindb/python-bugs-list?admpw=XXXXXX
	http://mail.python.org/mailman/admindb/python-list?admpw=XXXXXX
	...
	do
	    mmfold $url;
	done
    }

then just step through the pages it generates.  Information for each held
message is displayed in a single line and the default action is to discard,
which I find is the most useful action.

Maybe it will help to keep your held message lists down under 1,000.

Cheers,

-- 
Skip Montanaro - skip at pobox.com - http://www.smontanaro.net/