Wharton Computing Student Support

Owning a Mailing List

After you create a mailing list, keep the following in mind:

• When your list is first created, you are the only person subscribed to the list (although, unless the list is restricted, new users can subscribe at any time).
• Read the document Using Mailing Lists to learn how users can post messages and subscribe or unsubscribe to your list. Practice using the basic commands to post a message to the new list before you advertise it to other users.
• A message can be sent to all the subscribers on the mailing list by sending e-mail addressed to the list name.

To manage your list, review the options below:

Changing your List's Properties

You can perform the following tasks using the Managing Mailing Lists tool in the My Account section of SPIKE.

• Make the list moderated or unmoderated
• Make the list open or closed
• Stipulate that only members of the list can find out the list's membership
• Find out the password to the list that you own
• Change the maximum message length
• Change the expiration date
• Change the list's category
• Change the list's description

Seeing Who is On Your List

To obtain a list of the users subscribed to your mailing list, you can use the Managing Mailing Lists tool in the My Account section of SPIKE.

Subscribing and Unsubscribing Users to the List

Once your list is created, users can subscribe or unsubscribe themselves to your list (unless the list is a restricted list). As the owner of the list, you can also add or remove subscribers. This may be useful if you have a group of people you want to be certain are subscribed to the list.

To subscribe and unsubscribe users, you can use the Managing Mailing Lists tool in the My Account section of SPIKE to edit your list membership.

Recreating the List

To recreate the list from scratch and add new members, you can use the Managing Mailing Lists tool in the My Account section of SPIKE to edit your list's membership.

Adding Multiple Addresses

To add a group of e-mail addresses to your mailing list, you can use the Managing Mailing Lists tool in the My Account section of SPIKE to edit your list membership.

Changing the List Password

To change your password for the mailing list, send the following request to majordomo@wharton.upenn.edu:

passwd  listname oldpassword newpassword

For example, on a list named cricket, type the following to change the old password, greatpassword, to the new password betterpassword.

To: majordomo@wharton.upenn.edu
Subject:
Message:
passwd cricket greatpassword betterpassword

Approving Messages Sent to Moderated Lists

If you have chosen to make your list a moderated list, you must approve all messages sent to the list's subscribers. When someone posts a message to the list, the message is first sent to you with the following "Subject:" line:

bounce listname@wharton.upenn.edu: Approval required

If you want this posting to be distributed to everyone on the mailing list, approve it by doing the following:
(If you decide not to post the message, you may want to send e-mail to the user explaining the purpose of the list and why the posting has not been approved).

Approving Postings with Outlook 2003 or 2007 only.

After a message is sent to the list, you will receive the message starting with the word BOUNCE.

If you are using the Outlook mail client to approve postings to your mailing list, you need to make a change to the following setting before you can start approving messages :

• In Outlook, go to Tools->Options and click on the Preferences tab.
• Click on the Email Options button and uncheck the box against the field Remove extra line breaks in plain text messages

To approve and send these messages to the mailing list:

• Select the bounced message.
• Click on the Forward button in the toolbar. If you have your program set to use brackets (>) at the beginning of each line when you forward a message, you may want to turn this option off.
• Type the address of the mailing list in the address field next to the 'TO'.
• In the very first line of the message, type:

Approved:listpassword

You must type this command exactly as it appears above -- the 'A' in Approved must be capitalized, and there should be no spaces.

• Please follow the steps listed below to finish the approval process.
  

Text Format :

Please delete the text you see in red and bold from the header text of the message.

-----Original Message-----
From Tue Nov 4 12:35:30 2008
Received: from smtp-relay.wharton.upenn.edu (smtp-relay.wharton.upenn.edu
[128.91.86.194])
             by onyx.wharton.upenn.edu (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id mA4HZTEU029005
             for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 12:35:29 -0500
Received: from RAMPART1.wharton.upenn.edu (rampart1.wharton.upenn.edu
[128.91.87.16])
             by smtp-relay.wharton.upenn.edu (8.13.8/8.13.1) with ESMTP id
mA4HZTqk002355
             for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 12:35:29 -0500
X-DomainKeys: Sendmail DomainKeys Filter v1.0.1 smtp-relay.wharton.upenn.edu
mA4HZTqk002355
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; s=smtp-relay; d=wharton.upenn.edu; c=nofws;
q=dns;
             b=dMSos8e4wPGgS0QKgoISTaL6BIL2a1xb2r/9gjgtcwr98B2NAEjGPXpdu/iu7NIf3
             pbxtBavmYt1S2LRqLv3+w==
Received: from OWA1.wharton.upenn.edu (172.16.32.160) by
RAMPART1.wharton.upenn.edu (172.16.32.20) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id
8.1.311.1; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 12:35:25 -0500
Received: from KITE.wharton.upenn.edu ([172.16.32.39]) by OWA1.wharton.upenn.edu
([172.16.32.160]) with mapi; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 12:35:29 -0500

Once finished, the header text should look like the example below.

Approved:listpassword
From: "Lastname, Firstname"<username@wharton.upenn.edu>
To: listname Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 12:35:33 -0500
Subject: Hello and Welcome.
Thread-Topic: Hello and Welcome.
Thread-Index: Ack+o72taiTgWHR5SqKDk7RWmU1CuQ==
Message-ID: (FEE685C811A7E44AAD17E47B2A966E29132DAD2C2D@KITE.wharton.upenn.edu)
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Language: en-US
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="_000_FEE685C811A7E44AAD17E47B2A966E29132DAD2C2DKITEwhartonup_"
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Spam-Score:  (-3.999) DKIM_SIGNED,HTML_MESSAGE,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_MED,SPF_PASS
X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.65 on 172.16.33.106

Note: There should not be any blank lines between Approved:password and the rest of the header starting with the X-MimeOLE field. .

• Click Send to mail out the bounced message. It should go to every recipient on the list.

Approving New Users

If you have chosen to have a restricted list, users cannot subscribe or unsubscribe themselves to the list unless they are approved by you. When a person submits a request to subscribe, a message is sent to you for approval. All requests for approval have the following "Subject:" line: approve listname

To add a user to your mailing list, you can edit your list membership using the Managing Mailing Lists tool in the My Account section of SPIKE.