MIT Mailman User Guide:
Athena List Features

MIT Mailman

DRAFT April 28, 2003
This list of Athena list features and comparable Mailman options is being made available to assist Athena list Owners and Subscribers with the transition to Mailman. If you have any comments or additions, please email them to accounts@mit.edu.

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.

 


MIT Updated April 28, 2003. Copyright © 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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