So, configurations updated and mailman restarted, results look good, typical changed bit in text involves placing * right after mention of [Ss]ubject (and also if suitably relevant and present, body), and then very shortly after that bit of text, adding: *At the present time, our anti-spam rejects if body is empty/blank (after stripping out images, etc.), so, as work-around, if the body would otherwise cause such rejection, include in the body just the word "end" (without the quotes) on a line by itself.
E.g. in the current text response to the help command: this site. A command can be in the subject* line or in the body* of the message. *At the present time, our anti-spam rejects if body is empty/blank (after stripping out images, etc.), so, as work-around, if the body would otherwise cause such rejection, include in the body just the word "end" (without the quotes) on a line by itself.
Some other minor adjustments also done to have text reasonably flow around the added bits. E.g.:
--- /usr/share/mailman/en/verify.txt 2016-09-14 23:04:19.000000000 -0700 +++ verify.txt 2017-07-19 22:57:07.000000000 -0700 @@ -3,7 +3,13 @@ We have received a request%(remote)s for subscription of your email address, "%(email)s", to the %(listaddr)s mailing list. To confirm that you want to be added to this mailing list, simply reply to this -message, keeping the Subject: header intact. Or visit this web page: +message, keeping the Subject*: header intact. +*At the present time, our anti-spam rejects if body is empty/blank +(after stripping out images, etc.), so, as work-around, if the body +would otherwise cause such rejection, include in the body just the word +"end" (without the quotes) on a line by itself. + +Or visit this web page:
%(confirmurl)s
And, anti-spam looking quite good. Quite few false-positives (at least after some earlier configuration adjustments). Whole lot 'o crud spam being rejected ... Looking at logs, 5,384 rejections (but note that some of those are soft-fails, e.g. greylisting) in 10d 10h 34m 3s, that gives us: about 21.5 rejections/hr., or about a rejection every 2.8 minutes. Don't think I've seen a single actual spam email make it through ... yet.
So, thus far, pretty dang good results on the anti-spam.
5384 2017-07-19 23:13:57 2017-07-09 12:39:54 10 10:34:03 5384/(24*3600*10+3600*10+34*60+3)*3600 21.48722400151655740800 1/(5384/(24*3600*10+3600*10+34*60+3)*60) 2.79235698365527488942
From: "Michael Paoli" Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: [BALUG-Admin] BALUG lists ... blank body with command in Subject: header, ... subscriber options Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2017 22:15:55 -0700
So, bit of searching (find(1)) and such ... looks like those relevant texts are configurable under: /etc/mailman/en/ - at least for list installed/configured to only use English (I'm not planning to use nor translate nor translate changes to other languages). And looks like they start out, at least initially (and thus far on this host/installation) with same set of files in each (at least same names and contents - looks like mtimes probably also all match). So ... likely just need to suitably edit the applicable ones under /etc/mailman/en/ and probably give mailman a restart, do a bit more testing to confirm, etc., and that should cover that.