| Athena
Lists |
Location
of Comparable
Option
in Mailman |
| Administer list from Athena (listmaint & blanche) or web.mit.edu/moira |
Administer list from https://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/admin |
Administrator
Administrator can be a person with an @mit.edu or self-owned by all list
members. Accounts at other MIT domains such as lcs.mit.edu or ai.mit.edu, or
people with @alum.mit.edu forwarding addresses, cannot maintain lists. Every
Athena mailing list must be owned by one or more administrators. Administrators
have the power to update the membership of a list, or change its characteristics
such as visibility and the list name.
Every administrator must
have a Kerberos username. To modify a list, a tool such as listmaint or blanche
is used. It is best to use these tools by logging into Athena. For more information,
see the stock answer on listmaint.
|
General Options screen,
owner field
Multiple administrators are acceptable; owners are identified by email address.
People without @mit.edu email accounts can be administrators. The list administrators
are the people who have ultimate control over all parameters of this mailing
list. They are able to change any list configuration variable available through
these administration web pages. |
self-owned
A list may have itself designated as its own maintainer; this means that
anyone on the list can add and remove members. If all of the people you are specifying
for adminstrators are also going to be the only members of your list, then you
probably want a self-owned list. If your list is meant to be managed by one or
more people, but the list itself is larger, then you probably do not want a self-owned
list. |
Not equally available
in Mailman.
However, in the General Options screen, owner field, a list owner could specify
all the members as list owners, or share the list administrator password with
all members. |
public or private
An Athena list can be made either public or private. By default, a list will
be private. If a list is made public, an Athena user can add herself to the list
by using the list administration tools. If a list is private, a list administrator
must add new members to the list. Public lists are a good choice for MIT wide
discussion lists to which any member of the MIT community can subscribe, as well
as lists which are used for essentially public information or discussion which
see high turnover rates in
their membership. |
Privacy options, Subscription
rules screen, subscribe_policy field
Owners can set which steps are required for subscription:
-
Confirm (*) - email confirmation required
- Require approval - require list administrator approval for subscriptions
- Confirm and approve - both confirm and approve |
visible or hidden
An Athena list can be either hidden or visible. By default, a list is visible,
which means that other Athena users can look up basic information about this
list, such as its membership, description or its administrators. If a list is
made hidden, that information is available only to the list administrators (and
select other, privileged users), via list maintenance software. Even list members
cannot view the membership or the information for a hidden list, unless they
are also administrators. |
Privacy options, Subscription
rules screen, advertised field
Can set if list is advertises when people ask what lists are on the mailman
machine;
list is available from http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo
Privacy options, Subscription rules screen, private_roster field
Can set who can view member list: Anyone, List
members, List admin only |
mailing list
An Athena list is by default a mailing list. That means that the members
of the list will be mailable through the address listname@mit.edu, which will
distribute the mail the all the members of the list. Such a list may include
email addresses for users outside of MIT. You may choose to not make your list
a mailing list. This is useful if you want to use the list as an access group
for an Athena file system, but do not
want it to be an email address. |
All Mailman lists are
mailing lists. |
AFS Group
In addition to (or instead of) being a mailing list, and Athena list can
also be a group. A group can be used as an access control list on the AFS file
system, for example. If you wish to be able to set access permissions on an Athena
directory or locker for the members of your list, you should choose to make it
a group. Note that only Athena users (or WinAthena users) on your list will be
able to take advantage of this feature. If you have any other members on your
list, such as email addresses outside of MIT, they will not be able to access
Athena
file systems. |
Not available in Mailman. |
NFS Group
While AFS groups (the default type) are what you need for giving permissions
on most Athena lockers, if the locker in question is an NFS file system (such
as a directory mounted from a private workstation), then access is granted via
an NFS group. Note that only Athena users (or WinAthena users) on your list will
be able to take advantage of this feature. If you have any other members on your
list, such as email addresses outside of MIT, they will not be able to access
Athena
file systems. |
Not available in Mailman. |