SmartList Remote Maintainers Guide

W3C's mailing lists are managed using a customized version of SmartList.

E-mail command interface

Many W3C lists allow people to sub and unsub using an e-mail command interface.

Web interface

The List admin tool allows list maintainers to add or remove subscribers, view info about the list's config, and view recent log entries.

If you need more info about a list that is not provided by the list admin tool, please contact <sysreq@w3.org>.

Handling [Moderator Action] messages

If your mailing list has posting restrictions enabled and a previously unknown address sends mail to the list, you will receive a message with [Moderator Action] prepended to the Subject, e.g.:

Subject: [Moderator Action] original subject

If this is a legitimate message for your list, you should approve it through to the list using the Moderator action queue review web interface or your mail client's "bounce", "resend", or "redirect" feature. Smartlist will remove the [Moderator Action] prefix and the message will appear to come from the original sender (and not from you). Some custom headers may be added to indicate you forwarded the mail, for example Resent-From:.

If a message was sent to multiple mailing lists, the easiest way to figure out which list(s) caused the moderator action, is to display / view the X-Envelope-To header.

Here are some notes on how to handle these messages in various mail clients:

For Thunderbird you need this extension. Although it doesn't allow you to edit the subject line, so it will still say [Moderator Action] on the outward-going mail, as pointed out above the W3C servers strip it off.
For Mac Mail, hit shift+cmd+e, or use the "Redirect" button that you can add to your Toolbar
Outlook 2000
For Gmail, see Bouncing a message from Gmail by Sam Ruby.
For mutt, type 'b' to bounce then enter the list's address.

Handling [Moderator Action (size limit exceeded)] messages

You can find the size limit in the "configuration" information of a mailing list, available from the right-hand side after searching it via the List admin tool.

A message may be stuck because of an attachment that is too large, and the list moderator may not bypass a list's size limit. Here's how to proceed in this case:

Forward to an archive mailing list (see below for guidance)
Find the link of the attachment(s) in the list web archive
Go back to your mailer:
1. strip the attachment(s) from the mail to moderate
2. type somewhere e.g., at the top, that the attachment(s) is/are archived elsewhere and paste the link
3. redirect

Guidance for which archive mailing list to choose depending on the confidentiality-level of the target list:

member-visible: w3c-archive@w3.org (indicative size limit: 25971520 bytes): cf. https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-archive/
team-only: w3t-archive@w3.org (indicative size limit: 41943040 bytes): cf. https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Team/w3t-archive/
public: www-archive@w3.org (indicative size limit: 41943040 bytes): cf. https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-archive/