When a message is posted to the list, a series of moderation criteria are
applied to determine the disposition of the message. This section
contains the modeation controls for postings from both members and
non-members.
default_member_moderation
Member postings are held for moderation if their moderation
flag is turned on. Note that only the list administrators can
change the value of a member's moderation flag.
You can control whether new members get their moderation flag
turned on or off by default when they subscribe to the list. By
turning this flag off by default, postings by members will be
allowed without further intervention (barring other restrictions
such as size or implicit recipient lists - see below). By
turning the flag on, you can quarantine new member postings to
make sure that they meet your criteria for netiquette, topicality,
etc. Once you determine that the new member understands the
community's posting rules, you can turn off their moderation flag
and let their postings go through unstopped.
E-newsletter style lists can also be set up by using the
moderation flag. By setting the member_moderation_action
to Reject, and by turning off the moderation flag for just
the few approved senders, your list will operate in essentially a
one-way direction. Note that you'd also need to reject or discard
postings from non-members.
member_moderation_action
This is the action to take for postings from a member who's
moderation flag is set. For typical discussion lists, you'll
likely set this to Hold so that the list moderator will get
a chance to manually approve, reject, or discard the message. For
e-newsletter and announcement lists, you might want to set this to
Reject or Discard.
Note that when a moderated member posts to your list, and the
member_moderation_action is set to Hold, the message
will appear on the administrative requests page. When you dispose
of the message, you will be given an opportunity to clear the
moderation flag at the same time. If you're quarantining new
posts, this makes it very convenient to both approve a new
member's post and de-moderate them at the same time.
member_moderation_notice
When a member's moderation flag is turned on and
member_moderation_action is Reject, this variable
contains the text sent in the rejection notice.
The next batch of variables controls what happens when non-members
post messages to the list. Each of these accepts one email address
per line; regular expressions are allowed if the line starts with the
(caret) character. These address lists are always consulted in the
order in which they're presented on this page (i.e. accepts first,
followed by holds, rejections, and discards).
accept_these_nonmembers
Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are
accepted, barring other list restrictions due to size, implicit
recipients, etc. You might want to add alternative addresses of
approved posters to this list.
hold_these_nonmembers
Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are
held for moderator approval.
reject_these_nonmembers
Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are
rejected, i.e. bounced back to the original sender. There
currently is no way to add additional text to the rejection
message.
discard_these_nonmembers
Postings from non-members whose addresses match this list are
discarded, with no bounce back message. You might want to add the
addresses of known spammers to this list.
generic_nonmember_action
This variable controls what happens to non-member posts when the
address of the sender doesn't match any of the above four lists.
If you set this to Hold, the posting will appear on the
administrative requests page, and you will be given an opportunity
to add the non-member to one of the above four lists at the same
time you dispose of the held message.
forward_auto_discards
When messages from non-members are discarded, either because the
sender address matched discard_these_nonmembers, or because
generic_nonmember_action is Discard, you can choose
whether such messages are forwarded to the lsit administrators or
not.
