Thank you for agreeing to moderate the mr@wolff.to mailing list. My commands are a little different from other mailing lists, but I think you will find them intuitive and easy to use. Here are some instructions for the tasks you may have to perform as a list-owner and/or moderator. General list instructions follow at the end of this message. Remote subscription ------------------- As a moderator, you can subscribe and unsubscribe any address to the mailing list. To subscribe "john@host.domain", simply put a hyphen after the command word, then his address with '=' instead of the '@'. For instance, to subscribe that address, send mail to: You can similarly remove the address by sending a message to: That's all. No subject and no message body needed! I will send a confirmation request to the user address, in this case . All the user has to do is to reply to this confirmation request message. The confirmations are necessary to make it extremely hard for a third party to add or remove an address to the list. I will notify the user when his/her subscriber status has changed. Subscription ------------ Any user can subscribe or unsubscribe by sending mail to: The user will receive a confirmation request to make sure s/he controls the subscription address. Once this is verified the user is unsubscribed. Subscriptions work the same way. The user can also use: to have mail sent to "mary@host.domain". Only if she receives mail at this address will she receive the confirmation request and be able to reply to it. Your address and identity will not be revealed to the subscriber, unless you send mail directly to the user. Moderated posts --------------- When posts are moderated, I will save the posted message and send you a copy together with instructions. The message to you will have "MODERATE for ..." as the subject. To accept the post, just reply to the 'Reply-To:', which I have configured with the correct "accept" address address. You do not need to include the post itself. In fact, I will ignore anything you send me as long as the address you send to is correct. If you want to reject it, send mail to the 'From:' address, which I have configured with the correct "reject" address. This can usually be done by 'reply-to-all', then deleting any address other than the "reject" address. You may add a comment to the sender between two lines starting with three '%'. I will send only this comment to the sender with the rejected post. Again, I will not reveal your identity. I will process the message according to the first reply I receive. If you send me a request to accept a message that has already been rejected or vice versa, I will let you know. If I receive no moderator replies within a certain period of time (normally 5 days), I will return the message to the sender with an explanation of what happened. Your administrator can also set up the list so that such "ignored" messages are simply deleted without notification, rather than returned to sender. Vacations --------- If you are temporarily at a different address, just forward all messages that have the correct 'Mailing-List:' header (or all that have subjects starting with 'MODERATE for mr@wolff.to' or 'CONFIRM subscribe to mr@wolff.to') to the new address. You can then moderate from the new address. Alternatively, you can forward the messages to a friend so that s/he can moderate for you. Please OK this with the list owner first. If you would like to automatically approve all requests while you are gone, set up you mail client to auto-reply to messages that have subjects meeting the above criteria. Good luck! PS: Please contact the list owner (mr-owner@wolff.to) if you have any questions or problems.