Manager Guide: Moderator Requests

As the list administrator or moderator, you will often receive messages from the mailman system alerting you to "moderator requests" or posts that "require approval." Those emails include links and instructions for processing the requests.

On http://lists.uua.org/mailman/admindb/listname ("Tend to pending moderator requests"), you'll see all pending administrative requests. There will probably be a fair amount of spam in addition to legitimate messages for the list or for the list manager.

To read the text of a message, click on the number inside the brackets next to the "Subject" line for that message—you'll see the text as well as the complete internet headers (this is sometimes useful for diagnosing problems with individual messages).

In the left column of the page, you can select a specific action to take for each message (detailed information and instructions can be found at http://lists.uua.org/mailman/admindb/listname?details=instructions). If all the messages are spam, you can clear the moderator requests by checking the "Discard all messages marked Defer" box and clicking the "Submit All Data" button.

If you see a lot of spam messages from a particular address, it may be worth checking the "Add spammersaddress@email.com to one of these sender filters" box and selecting "Discard." This is only helpful for addresses you see over and over again; most spammers choose new addresses for each flood, so there's little point in explicitly banning them.