What are the responsibilities of a list administrator/owner?

What is the sending address for my mailing list?

What are the various passwords all about?

How do I subscribe an address or a list of addresses?

How do I unsubscribe an address or a list of addresses?

How do I restrict sending privilege to specific subscribers?

How do I change my list from an 'open sending' list to a 'restricted sending' list?

How do I set up my list so that all future subscribers will not be allowed to post?

A valid subscriber has sent a message to the list and it has been 'bounced' to me, the list administrator, for approval. Why?

What do I do with the admin e-mail messages that are sent to me about pending messages?

How can I view the entire list of subscribers?

 

What are the responsibilities of a list administrator/owner?
You should have been provided with an administrator password. Using the administration web site at: http://listsmart.osl.state.or.us/mailman/admin you can perform various list maintenance functions. These include subscribing and unsubscribing addresses, changing sending permissions, changing list information, etc.

As the list administrator, you will receive automated messages when there is a task that you need to take care of. These may include someone trying to subscribe to the list or a subscriber who doesn't have sending privilege, or a non-subscriber trying to post a message to the list. In these cases, you will receive an e-mail alerting you that you must do something. Log on to the Adm. page and follow the instructions. Usually, this will require you to either 'reject' or 'discard' a message or request. If you 'reject' it, you can type an explanation in the box below. If you 'discard' it, the message will not be posted to the list. If you 'approve' it, the message will be forwarded on to the list. As the list administrator, you can decide what will happen to this pending message. If you don't act, you will continue to receive alerts.

What is the sending address for my mailing list?
The address to send your messages to is <listname>@listsmart.osl.state.or.us, substituting your actual list name for <listname>.

What are these various passwords all about?
As a administrator/owner, you should have received an e-mail with an administrator password and some information about maintaining your list. Use this password for all administrative tasks, like unsubscribing addresses, changing sending privilege, changing list information, etc. Even though you are the list administrator, you must also be subscribed to the list if you want to post messages. You will also receive a subscriber e-mail with your user password and information about the list. All your subscribers will receive this message as well. Use this password for maintaining your own user account. This password will not work for administrative tasks.

How do I subscribe an address or a list of addresses?
Log on to the administrative web page as described above. Select 'Configuration Categories', 'Membership Management', 'Mass Subscription'. Scroll down to the large box that says 'Enter one address per line below'. Type or paste an address or addresses in the box. You should include only the e-mail address, no names or other information. The format should be something like name@wherever.com. You can also go to the box labeled '...or specify a file to upload' and browse to a text file with your addresses. Again, the addresses must be in the format described above, one per line, in text format. If you have your addresses in a word processing format, be sure to save the list as "text only" before you import it.

How do I unsubscribe an address or a list of addresses?
Log on to the administrative web page as described above. To unsubscribe an individual address, under 'Configuration Categories', select 'Membership Management', 'Membership List'. Scroll to the address that you want to unsubscribe To the left of the address is a box in a column labeled 'unsub'. Check the box and click 'Submit Your Changes'. To unsubscribe a group of addresses, Select 'Configuration Categories', 'Membership Management', 'Mass Removal'. Scroll down to the large box that says 'Enter one address per line below'. Type or paste an address or addresses into the box. Be sure the address or addresses exactly match the addresses in the address list. You can also go to the box labeled '...or specify a file to upload' and browse to a text file with your addresses. Again, the addresses must be in the format described above, one per line, in text format. If you have your addresses in a word processing format, be sure to save the list as "text only" before you import it.

How do I restrict sending privilege to specific subscribers?
Sending privilege are set in the list administration page http://listsmart.osl.state.or.us/mailman/admin/. Choose your list. Log on to that page, utilizing your list administration password. Under 'Configuration Categories', select 'Membership Management'. Scroll down to the list of subscribers. To the right of each address is a box under a column labelled 'mod' (moderation). If there is a check in the box next to a subscriber's address, that subscriber is not permitted to send messages. If you want that subscriber to be able to send messages to the list, remove the check and click 'Submit Your Changes'.

How do I change my list from an 'open sending' list to a 'restricted sending' list?
Log on to the administration page as described above. Under 'Configuration Categories', select 'Membership Management'. Scroll down to the list of subscribers. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen. If the item that says 'Set everyone's moderation bit, including those members not currently visible' is checked 'No', change it to 'Yes' and click 'Submit Your Changes'. You will then have to reset the sending privileges as described in the previous item.

How do I set up my list so that all future subscribers will not be allowed to post?
Log on to the administration page as described above. Under 'Configuration Categories', select 'Privacy Options/Sender Filters'. Scroll down to 'By default, should new list member postings be moderated?'. Check 'Yes'. If you would like subscribers who are not permitted to post to get an explanation when their posting is rejected, go to 'Action to take when a moderated member posts to the list' and select 'Reject'. In the box below, type a generic explanation why the posting is being rejected, such as 'This list is for announcements only from approved senders'. Then click 'Submit Your Changes'.

A valid subscriber has sent a message to the list and it has been 'bounced' to me, the list adminstrator, for approval. Why?
It is possible the person is not subscribed. Check the subscriber list. If you are the sender, be sure that your name is in the subscriber list. Sometimes owners think that they have sending priviliges simply because they are the owner. Not true.

Another reason for a message being held for approval is that the actual sending address and the subscribed address are not exactly the same. Either your email address changed since you subscribed or your address was not set up correctly in the beginning. An example is if your mail program sees you as joe.q.public@das.state.or.us and you are subscribed as joe.q.public@state.or.us. If this is the case, you can go in and modify your or another subscriber's address. Sometimes, you must contact the ListSmart support team to troubleshoot this problem.

What do I do with the admin e-mail messages that are sent to me about pending messages?
There are various reasons why you receive these messages. In all cases, they are meant to alert you that you need to take action. One scenario is that the list is restricted for sending. A restricted subscriber attempt to send a message to the list. To take care of this, click on the administrative link in the e-mail alert and log on with your password. The resulting web page will show the message that was sent. Click on the number link of the message to show all the options. You have several choices: Approve, Reject, Discard. If you want the message to be sent to the list, check 'Approve' and click on 'Submit Your Changes'. If you don't want the message to go to the list, but want to send the person a note, check 'Reject' and type a message in the box and click on 'Submit Your Changes'. This is most useful when you think the person is a subscriber, but either they are approved to post and their e-mail address has changed or they are not approved to post. If you want to just Discard the message, check 'Discard' and click 'Submit Your Changes'. This is most useful when you receive a post from a non-subscriber and you don't want to send it to the list. This could be a 'spam' message that is being sent out to random lists and addresses.

How can I view the entire list of subscribers?
There are several ways to do this. You can contact the LISTsmart support team to request that the list admin page display more subscribers. You can go to the list information page at: http://listsmart.osl.state.or.us/mailman/listinfo/yourlistname, scroll to the bottom and enter your subscribed email address and password. This is different from your list admin password. You can also temporarily change the list configuration so that the subscriber list can only be viewed by the administratior. Do this in Configuration Categories/Privacy Options/Membership Exposure. Change it to "Who can view subscription list? - list admin only". Don't forget to change it back to "List Members" when you are finished getting your subscriber list. After changing this option, go to the list information page and enter your list admin email address and password to get the subscriber list.