[Balug-admin] Mailman, lists, etc.

[Michael Paoli]

Thanks Rick.  Lots of good information - particularly for those of us
not having the access to read those configuration details.

Perhaps at our next BALUG meeting, at one table we can go over some of
these administrivia details, and get a consensus (or at least strong
plurality) of how we should handle/adjust these things.

I'd guestimate one of the trickier areas may be the "approvers" and such
for the "announce" list (and the Mailman nag recipients).  Seems we would
want a relatively small number (e.g. approximately 3 or so?) of folks that
could "approve" "announce" items and/or send directly to "announce" without
another's approval, and that this same small number of folks (at least the
approvers) would get the Mailman "nag" reminders (e.g. things held pending
approval).

I'd think by structuring and "advertising" (documenting, e.g. the lists and
their usage) in appropriate manners, we could minimize the "burden" of the
"announce" approvers.  E.g. if we have policy that more-or-less says don't
send stuff to announce, it will almost certainly get rejected, then I'd think
it a bit easier for the "announce" approvers to handle the Mailman nag messages,
as those would all be simple rejects.  But we'd need to set up some reasonable
means for folks to bring to our attention stuff we might want to include, or
include in part (or provide pointer to more details) on some "announce"
item(s).  Not quite sure right off the top of my head what might be the best
way to do that (the "admin" list doesn't quite work for that, as folks need
to be subscribed to it to post to it, otherwise it's held for administrative
action, and we add another layer of steps/complication ... but we don't want
random spammers to be able to send straight through to "admin" postings
either).

Anyway, I'm sure we'll come up with ways to improve the process (like dropping
stuff that's held more than 32 days ... some of the stuff that went out on
"annouce" was more than 60 days old!).

references:
http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-admin-balug.org/2006-June/000158.html
et. seq.