Many of you have begun sending out emails from official email addresses like treasurer@mychorus.com instead of janesmith@gmail.com as suggested in our previous news update. As a result, you may have run into some issues with the mailing lists – e.g. people are now having their emails held for approval. We have some more information for you to help you understand why this is happening, as well as outline a useful shortcut which can make these new moderation requirements stop.
Moderating Mailing Lists and allowing emails from official addresses
We advise you to send emails to the mailing lists from an official email address like treasurer@mychorus.com, instead of a personal email address such as janesmith@gmail.com. This is due to policies put in place by Gmail, Yahoo, etc. however, when you do this, you may have received messages such as; "As list moderator, your authorization is requested for the following mailing list posting" or "Your mail is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval". We have outlined some more information below to help you with this.
1. Why is this happening?
In your Making Music Platform, there is a specialised programme called Mailman which is used to run the mailing lists. However, Mailman is not actually part of the Platform itself. As a result, it doesn't know about all the information in the Platform system – all it sees is a list of email addresses. This causes a problem when someone has multiple email addreses.
For example, imagine that you're the treasurer of your chorus, and you need to send out emails to all the members.
You used to send these emails by selecting "From: Jane Smith (janesmith@gmail.com)". Now, you select "From: Jane Smith (treasurer@mychorus.com)". In the members mailing list, Mailman simply knows you as janesmith@gmail.com. So, when it sees an email from treasurer@mychorus.com, it doesn't know who this is. When Mailman receives an email from an address it doesn't know, it asks someone to decide whether this email should be accepted (and sent out to the whole mailing list). This is called moderation. Moderation is important because we need some restrictions in place to prevent spammers from sending emails to your members. But at the same time, we need to allow legitimate emails to go through, even if they don't come from an email address Mailman recognises.
2. How do I (the webmaster) do this moderation?
The first step is to make sure you're receiving the moderation emails. These will usually be sent to webmaster@mychorus.com (but some groups have changed this to a different address). You can confirm this through the mailing lists page:
(If you want to change this for whatever reason, click Retune.)
You may also want to confirm that the webmaster@ email is working correctly. Click the Admin link in the top-right corner to go to your Admin dashboard, then click on the link which says Email Addresses and Mailing Lists:
You should see something like this:
If, instead, you see this:
This means that the webmaster@ email is not working. To fix it, click the + icon on the right-hand side.
(If you're having problems with your webmaster@ email, please email us at platform@makingmusic.org.uk)
If everything is working, then you should receive emails every so often saying "As list moderator, your authorization is requested for the following mailing list posting". You should make sure that you always check your spam/junk folder – sometimes the moderation emails end up in there.
When you get these moderation emails:
- Click on the link in the email.
- Enter the mailing list password.
- Select what you want to do with each email.
- For example, to allow this email and always allow emails from this person in future:
- Or, if it's a spammer, then you want to ignore this email and always ignore emails from this person in future:
- For example, to allow this email and always allow emails from this person in future:
- Once you've finished, click Submit All Data at the bottom of the page.
For more detailed instructions, see our main help guide on moderating mailing lists: https://www.makingmusic.org.uk/faq/mmp-create-and-administer-mailing-lists/moderating-mailman-mailing-list
3. Is there a shortcut?
Yes, there is a way to tell Mailman to automatically approve any email which comes from an official email address ending in @mychorus.com. For example, treasurer@mychorus.com, membership@mychorus.com, or director@mychorus.com. To do this:
- Go to the mailing list's page and click the link which says Administer this list via external Mailing List Management Console (Mailman):
- Click Privacy options...
3. then Sender filters:
4. Scroll down until you see this setting which says List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted:
5. Here, we want to add a special code.
The code is ^[^@]+@mychorus.com – where you replace mychorus.com with your actual domain name.
For example, if your chorus is: southvalleychorus.com...
...then the special code is: ^[^@]+@southvalleychorus.com
6. Add this code to the box on the right:
7. Scroll down to the bottom and click Submit Your Changes.
8. Finally, you'll need to repeat this process for each mailing list.
This is a somewhat technical process, so if you aren't quite sure how to do it, you're welcome to email us for assistance at platform@makingmusic.org.uk
More information
How do I find out the mailing list password?
Click the Update button here:
(While you're here, if you want to deal with the moderation requests, you can click Administer this list via external Mailing List Management Console (Mailman), then click Tend to pending moderator requests in the top-right corner.)
How can I see the email to decide whether to approve it?
There will be a copy of the email below the message you got saying As list moderator, your authorization is requested for the following mailing list posting.
Alternatively, you can click the number [1] in the middle to see a small preview.
Why am I receiving DMARC notification emails?
As the Webmaster, you may be receiving emails entitled something like Report Domain: Submitter: Report-ID: <0123456789.123456>
These are normal, and are usually a good sign that DMARC is being applied correctly - DMARC is a protocol that allows emails to be considered authentic, rather than spam.
To find out more about DMARC, and how to deal with the reports you may be receiving, please read our help-guide which is available on our website.
