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HOME: Mailing Lists / Smartlist

The Smartlist mailing list manager

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8. SmartList: Working with a Moderated List

How do I create a moderated list?

A moderated list means that every submission to the list goes through a list moderator before it actually gets posted to the list.

We have created a web-based interface for you to do this easily. Go to the Mail Manager then follow the directions on the screen.

The list of moderators email addresses is managed via the Mail Manager

Once the list is set up as a moderated list, one of the moderators should resend all submissions to the list after adding an "Approved: moderators-address@domain.com" line to the top of the email text. It will be no problem if several moderators resubmit the same submission concurrently, since the mailing list will filter out duplicates (i.e. only the first one will go out and be archived).

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How To Add an 'Approved' Header:

To Get an Approved Field in e-mail sent by a Moderator:
(For e-mail clients that do not support adding additional headers)
In rc.custom file for the list, uncomment the rc_local_submit_10 line as follows (use led, see above)

#RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_00 = rc.local.s00 # Uncomment (and change) these to
RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_10 = rc.local.s10 # call up customised local scripts
#RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20 = rc.local.s20 # at predefined points.
#RC_LOCAL_REQUEST_00 = rc.local.r00
#RC_LOCAL_REQUEST_10 = rc.local.r10
#RC_LOCAL_REQUEST_20 = rc.local.r20
#RC_LOCAL_REQUEST_30 = rc.local.r30


Then, create the file rc.local.s10 in the list directory where the rc.custom file is.

type: touch /home/username/domain-mail/listname/rc.local.s10

Here's the code, it can be copied and pasted after typing from within the list directory: cat > rc.local.s10:

# if there is no "Approved" header, and there is one in the
# first part of the body (before any subsequent blank lines)
# then move it to the header

0
* !^Approved
* B ?? ^Approved
{
# Extract the first "Approve" from the body
APPROVE="`grep '^Approved' | head -1`"

# Filter it from the body, and add it to the header
0 fw
| grep -v "^Approved" | formail -I"$APPROVE"
}

After pasting in above, hit enter and then type: ctrl-d

Next, make sure you have a file named moderators with your moderators email address in it

When you send a message to your Smartlist it will go to the moderators email inbox. To pass it on to the list for distribution simply type:

Approved moderatorsusername@domain.com
<-----must be a blank line before body of e-mail
begin message here



Updated: June 23, 2008

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