Kavi Mailing List Manager Help

Appendix J. Posting Access Tables
	Part VII. Appendix

Appendix J. Posting Access Tables

Table of Contents

Overview

Overview

The posting access table is designed to focus on the most complex area of list configuration, access control of posting—or—what happens when list users at different levels in the list user hierarchy send messages to the list? Seen in isolation from other list configuration issues, posting access becomes rather simple.

See Default List Types for posting access tables for the standard list types. If you are adding a custom list type, or managing or moderating a list based on a custom list type, and you want to make your own table, see the last section in this document.

Concepts

To understand how to use a posting access table or create your own, you must be familiar with the Kavi® Mailing List Manager subscriber types and the actions the list can be configured to perform on the email messages it receives. Remember that the mailing list determines what action to take on an email based solely on whether the email address of the sender is subscribed to one of the lists (i.e., 'Moderator', 'Poster', 'Digest Subscriber', 'Regular Subscriber') or not (in which case the mailing list classifies the sender as 'Public').

List user levels:

Moderator: A user whose address is on the 'Moderator List' and is sending an email from that address is recognized by the software as a moderator. Moderators are the most privileged type of user and are always able to post, although their posts may be moderated.
Poster: A user whose address is on the 'Poster List' (i.e. allow list) and is sending an email from that address is recognized by the software as a poster, and granted the same posting privileges as a subscriber.
Subscriber: A user whose address is on the 'Digest Subscriber' or 'Regular Subscriber' list, and is sending an email from that address is recognized by the software as a subscriber. Subscribers are usually allowed to post to discussion group forums, although their posts may be moderated. On lists with the most restricted type of posting, only moderators are allowed to post.
Public: A user who sends an email from an address that is unknown to the software (i.e., is not on any of the subscriber lists) is a public user. Public users are only allowed to submit posts to public lists.

Message processing actions:

post: The message is sent directly to the list.
moderate: The message is sent to the moderation queue. Moderators can approve messages in the moderation queue to send them to the list, reject messages to have them deleted, or ignore them until they timeout. When a message times out, it is removed from the queue and the sender is notified.
reject: The message is automatically deleted and fails silently.

Posting access table example

In this table, list user level is mapped to the action that will be taken when the list receives a message from this level of user.

To illustrate, we'll use the Moderated Private Discussion Group default list type.

Table J.1. Sample posting access table

List user level	Action
moderator	post
poster	post
subscriber	post
public	moderate

Create your own posting access table

List type configuration information is available through the Edit a List Type tool on the Super Admin Tools menu. Posting access is defined by the -M/m, -O/o and -U/u switches in the ezmlm-make argument string. The way these options interact in combination is complex and some of the combinations are meaningless. Fortunately, the meaningful combinations are all presented in the 'Who can post to the list?' option available through the Add a List Type and Edit a List Type tool interfaces. All you need to do is match the setting of this option in your list type to the matrix below and copy the pertinent information into your own table, or click the link to a default list type to access the posting access tables for that list type. Some of the combinations omit the -O/o switch because it is ignored in that combination.

Table J.2. Posting access matrix

MOU combination	MU	mOU	mOu	Mu	moU
Default list type	Public Discussion Group	Moderated Public Discussion Group, Newsletter	Moderated Private Discussion Group	Closed Private Discussion Group	Announce Only
Moderator action	post	moderate	post	post	moderate
Poster action	post	moderate	post	post	reject
Subscriber action	post	moderate	post	post	reject
Public action	post	moderate	moderate	reject	reject


Appendix I. Mail Log Samples		Appendix K. Sample Policy and Usage Statement