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What is a Mailman List?
Electronic mailing lists (also known as discussion groups) offer a
highly efficient way to both disseminate information to a large number of
people and hold long-distance discussions among many people.
Setting up a Mailman list gives you an email address of the form
<listname>@lists.prairienet.org. The Mailman program
processes mail sent to this address, screening it
according to rules established for the list. It then distributes a copy of
the message to every list member. List owners can manage their lists,
adding and deleting list members and making changes to how the list
operates with an administrative Web page set up for their list.
Why Use Mailman Instead of an Address Book in Your Email Client?
- An address book can be used by only one
person (though there are ways to share distribution
lists or set up global address books). A Mailman
list is available to anyone who can send
email, but also offers control over who can get messages
distributed to the list.
- If you set up a Mailman list to distribute
messages from any of the subscribers, you will have a
tool for group discussion via email.
- Mailman gives many options in areas like privacy,
control over who can subscribe, control over who can
post, and moderation of postings.
Mailman List Roles
With Mailman, you can be a list subscriber, list owner, or list
moderator. You also may take on multiple roles for a list or different
roles for different lists. In addition, the Mailman list server at the
University of Washington has a system administrator.
- Subscriber:
Someone who has subscribed to a list, receives messages posted to the
list, and may also post messages for distribution to the list is a
subscriber. Who may post, and how it is done, may be controlled by the
list owners. A subscriber has no administrative power over list
operation, but can change a few of his or her own subscription settings.
For example, a subscriber can decide to receive message "digests" rather
than individual postings.
- List Owner:
Each list must have an owner who is responsible for configuration,
maintenance and operation of the list. The list owner may establish other
owners, and may optionally have others take roles such as moderating the
discussion or managing subscription requests. List owners may execute
commands for their subscribers including adding and deleting subscribers.
- List Moderator:
List moderators are optional. They are assigned by the owners and can
manage list subscriptions and postings.
- Mailman System Administrator:
A system administrator is responsible for the operation of the Mailman
list server on which many lists reside. Administration tasks include
installation and maintenance of the software and the computers where
Mailman runs as well as creation and deletion of the individual lists.
The system administrator is also entitled to act as the list owner of any
mailing list on the server.
How do You Use Mailman at Prairienet?
Sending mail to list subscribers
When a message is to be distributed to the subscribers of a Mailman
list, it must be addressed to the list's address. For example, to post to
a list called mylist, you send mail to
mylist@lists.prairienet.org
All lists on the Mailman server at Prairienet have email addresses
of the form
<listname>@lists.prairienet.org
Messages sent to these addresses first go to the Mailman server.
Mailman receives the message and processes it, checking for errors and
following the rules established by the list owners. If a message is
valid, a copy is forwarded to each of the list's subscribers.
Changing subscriber/owner configuration options
Mailman performs lots of functions in addition to distributing
messages to subscribers. It allows you to do a task, like subscribing to a
list or changing how a list works, by going to a specific Web address.
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