[Mailman-Users] Help! Mailman's Digest Option Sending Too Many Digests

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Yosem Companys writes:
 > Hi all,
 > 
 > I'm one of the moderators of the Stanford University Program on Liberation
 > Technology at http://liberationtechnology.stanford.edu/.

You've come to the right place.  Mailman is a liberating technology!

 > I was wondering whether someone on this list could help me.  I'm
 > experiencing a problem with Mailman's digest option where, no matter what I
 > do, Mailman is sending too many digests daily.
 > 
 > I have configured the options Mailman gives me as follows:
 > 
 >    - Can list members choose to receive list traffic bunched in digests?
 >    Yes.
 >    - Which delivery mode is the default for new users? Regular.
 >    - When receiving digests, which format is default? MIME.
 >    - How big in Kb should a digest be before it gets sent out? 0.

I don't have time to look at the code, but I think this is your
problem.  I suspect that this needs to be positive (0 does mean
infinite in many contexts, but it's not documented to mean that here).

If you really want the digest to get (almost) arbitrarily large before
being sent, you could set it to 1000000 (meaning 1GB).  But I think
most users' mail programs will choke on that.  I would say 1000 is
about as large as I'd want it to go.

 >    - Should a digest be dispatched daily when the size threshold isn't
 >    reached? No.
 >    - How often should a new digest volume be started? Daily.

The digest volume has nothing to do with the number of digests sent.
It's like the volume of a journal.  If you only have one digest per
day, you're going to have 365 volumes per year, and one issue per
volume.  I would guess that's not what you want.

 >    - Should Mailman start a new digest volume? No.
 >    - Should Mailman send the next digest right now, if it is not empty? No.