I’d like your help in figuring out what documentation we still need to create or update for the mailing list service, I found this general how to create mailing list and this How to export list of email list subscribers from mailman. ¿what else should we document for members to use mailist?
Also, does anyone on TIAS wants to organize a workshop on mailist?
Thanks for asking! Last I checked, there was no guidance here or at Mailman on setting up lists for list owners with Mailman 3. I had to figure out by guessing and experimenting what all the settings mean and do, and that didn’t always go well. The settings and options are quite different from Mailman 2.
It would also help to see some of the recommended settings for various types of lists like we had with Mailman 2, such as discussion versus announcement.
Also, the default templates aren’t visible like they were in Mailman 2. So, while we can create custom templates, it’s much more difficult because we can’t simply edit the defaults. If the default templates for various things could be accessed somewhere for purposes of copy/paste/edit into custom templates, that would help a lot.
Thanks for starting this @vargarquista and @bhadda for the feedback.
In the email list section of our how-to links (common tasks) we’ve already identified some missing documentation pieces.
[How to create email lists using your own domain]
[How to reset admin password for email list]
[How to export list of email list subscribers] (this one exists but needs to be updated for mailman3)
[How to change admin for email list]
The functionality for creating an announcement or discussion list is not part of mailman itself but you can choose the list type in control panel when you create the list and it will up the corresponding preferences for you. This is mentioned in How to create mailing list
The questions we’ve received the most support tickets about are how to find the list admin and log in.
The other question we get a lot is why owners not being able to send mail to their own lists. (Because list owners are not added as members of the list by default.) It is not the default mailman behavior but maybe we should just add list owners as members at list creation time since that seems to be the expectation? Sorry that is not really a documentation question.
I’m not sure what the best way to make the templates available should be. We could upload a zip with all templates but that might become out of date after upgrades. Maybe linking to mailman github repos or documentation?
Jumping in on a topic we’ve found a lot of people we’re getting tripped up on. When new users are created they are set to List Default. List default is whatever is selected under Default action to take when a member posts to the list in Message Acceptance in settings. So for example if that setting is Hold for Moderation, then all new users will be set to Hold for Moderation. If you change the default action to reject, every member set to List Default will then switch to reject without any other action. This is a big upgrade over Mailman2 where if you changed the default for a list, then you would have to change the setting for every member of the list in order to change their behavior.
This is slightly confused because one of the possible actions is to set the default action to be Default Processing, which accepts any incoming message with the normal rules applied. This is distinct from List Default.
Hi all, thanks for bringing up this topic. Your questions have helped clarify some of the confusion I still had about Mailman 3, and I’d be happy to contribute more documentation on this and other topics.
Hi! the https://help.mayfirst.org/en/guide/how-to-create-a-new-email-list-mailman3 is not working, does anyone know what happen?
It has been updated and renamed to https://help.mayfirst.org/en/guide/how-to-create-a-mailing-list
También en español https://help.mayfirst.org/es/guide/how-to-create-a-mailing-list
In the past few weeks we have updated and expanded our mailing list documentation to include the following :
About mailing lists at May First
How to create a mailing list
How to access the mailing list web interface
How to reset your mailing list password
How to change the owner of a mailing list
How to export mailing list subscribers
How to subscribe to a mailing list
How to access mailing list archives
En las últimas semanas hemos actualizado y ampliado la documentación sobre las listas de correo para incluir lo siguiente:
Acerca de las listas de correo en May First
Cómo crear una lista de correo
Cómo acceder a la interfaz web de la lista de correo
Cómo restablecer la contraseña de su lista de correo
Aún nos faltan traducciones para las siguientes páginas:
Cómo cambiar el propietario de una lista de correo
Cómo exportar los suscriptores de una lista de correo
Cómo suscribirse a una lista de correo
Cómo acceder a los archivos de la lista de correo
We are focusing on the more common requests we’ve received over these past couple of months but I’ve added a bit about custom templates here. Given that the Mailman projects’ own user facing documentation is non existent on this front and there is so much we don’t know (without studying the code) about which variables work in which template contexts I think pointing members towards how they can research this themselves is the best we can do for now.
Thanks! I thought this was going to be a join effort since I show interest on this, but I appreciate all the progress you have made on this. Let´s talk about how volunteers like me can join this kind of efforts in the future. For now I can help with the Spanish translations.
No se preocupa compa, hay mucho más documentación para escribir! Ayuda con las traducciones estaría genial. 
No worries, there is still much more documentation to cover. Help with translations would be awesome.
Makes sense, thank you!
Solo quiero aclarar que no fue mi intención excluir de la participación en estos documentos. Si necesitamos su ayuda. Entre los comentarios aquí y una ola de tickets de soporte relacionados con las listas de correo que recibimos, me pareció apropiado dar prioridad temporalmente a la documentación de Mailman. Ash y yo comenzamos a trabajar en algunas páginas y no pensé que íbamos a avanzar tan rápido ene este bloque.
Estas páginas aún necesitan revisión, alguien más debería probar las guías prácticas y necesitamos mantener las traducciones sincronizadas lo mejor posible.
I just want to clarify I didn’t mean to exclude any participation in these documents. We really do need help. Between the comments here and a flurry of mailing list related support tickets we received I thought it was appropriate to prioritize the mailman documentation temporarily. Ash and I started a few pages and I didn’t think we’d advance this block so quickly.
These pages still need review, someone else should test the how-to’s, and we need keeping translations synced as best we can.
thank you for this topic. I set up a mayfirst listserv over a year ago and it floundered because things were not working and I couldn’t figure out why not. I am glad to see there is some ‘juice’ around helping to make it easier to set up a listserv and be ready to go!
(translated)
Gracias por este tema. Creé una lista de correo de MayFirst hace más de un año y acabó fracasando porque las cosas no funcionaban y no conseguía averiguar por qué. ¡Me alegra ver que hay gente dispuesta a echar una mano para que sea más fácil crear una lista de correo y tenerla lista para funcionar!