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WiscList : Email Commands

  1. Eligibility and Application
  2. List Security
  3. ListManager Interface
  4. Discussion Forum Interface
  5. Email Commands
  6. Advanced

Email Commands for List Members
Email Commands for List Administrators
Keywords to Avoid

Email Commands for List Members

List members can send an e-mail to the following email addresses to perform various tasks. For each command, the word listname is used to designate your list's actual name.

join-listname@lists.wisc.edu
Users can join your list by sending an email to this addres.

leave-listname@lists.wisc.edu
Members can unsubscribe from your list by sending an email to this address.

listname@lists.wisc.edu
Members can post to list by sending an email to this address.

owner-listname@lists.wisc.edu
Members can send email to list administrators by using this email address.

Email Commands for List Administrators

List administrators can perform a great deal of maintenance via email. However, we encourage the use of our web interface to prevent any problems. The following commands can be sent to lyris@lists.wisc.edu or listname-request@lists.wisc.edu, where listname is your list's name. The commands can be entered in the subject line or body of the message. Please note that the examples shown here should be typed all on one line, unless specifically stated otherwise. Your browser may wordwrap them to appear as if they are on two separate lines.

login
Before you can perform any task, you must login via e-mail. Send an email to lyris@lists.wisc.edu with the text login password, where password is your ListManager password. Make sure you are sending the email from the address that is registered with ListManager. Here is an example, where the password is pwd123:

login pwd123

add
To add a member to a list, login via email and send an email to lyris@lists.wisc.edu with the text add listname emailaddress name, where listname is your list's name, emailaddress is the member's email address, and name is the member's name (optional). To add the member without sending them a hello document, type quiet after listname.

add mylist quiet user1@nowhere.net Joe Smith

To add several members, surround the email addresses with << and >> and put each address on a separate line. Here is an example:

add joelist quiet <<
user1@nowhere.net
user2@nowhere.net
user3@nowhere.net
>>

To add members to multiple lists, simply type additional listnames after the first listname:

add mylist1 mylist2 mylist3 quiet user1@nowhere.net

If you choose to add members to multiple lists, you can use the onehello modifier to send only one hello message (if you are not using quiet). If you wish to send a confirmation message for each list, use the sendconfirm modifier. To send only one confirm message for all the lists, use the oneconfirm modifier. These modifiers go between the list names and the user names in the syntax of the command, similar to the quiet modifier:

add mylist1 mylist2 mylist3 onehello oneconfirm user1@nowhere.net

delete
Unsubscribes a member from a list. Login via email and send a message to lyris@lists.wisc.edu with the text delete listname emailaddress, where listname is your list's name and emailaddress is the member's e-mail address.

delete mylist user1@nowhere.net

To delete more than one member, put additional email addresses after the first, separated by spaces:

delete mylist user1@nowhere.net user2@nowhere.net user3@nowhere.net

You can also specify multiple lists in this manner:

delete mylist1 mylist2 user1@nowhere.net

To delete all members from a list, use all:

delete mylist1 all

To delete a member from all lists, use *:

delete * user1@nowhere.net

member
To approve or reject a member, send a message to lyris@lists.wisc.edu with the text member approve member-id or member reject member-id, where member-id is the member's ID number. You can submit more than one member ID in the command if needed.

moderate
To approve or reject a message, send a message to lyris@lists.wisc.edu with the text moderate approve moderate-id or moderate reject moderate-id, where moderate-id is the message's ID number.

review
Returns a list of members for the desired list. The syntax for this command is review listname. Sending this command as-is will return all members whose status is normal. To filter the results sent back to you, you can add one of the following modifiers to the end of the command:

  • (none) - return only those members who are of normal status ( default )
  • all - return members of all types.
  • names - return the email addresses and names only (for normal members only).
  • full - return email addresses, names, and other information (for normal members only).
  • held - return only those members who are on hold.
  • unsub - return only those members who have unsubscribed.
  • private - return only those members who are of private status.
  • expired - return only those members whose subscriptions have expired.
  • confirm - return only those members who are of confirm status.

By default, only list administrators may view this information. To change this, go to Utilities > List Settings > Discussion Group Features > Security and change the setting for "Security of member list". Please keep in mind your members' privacy before changing this setting.

You don't need to send each command in a separate email. To send multiple commands at once, separate them by placing each command on a single line. If a command can't fit in one line, place a continuation charcter (& or \) at the end of the current line and continue the command on the next line. Here is an example of an email that adds and deletes members:

login pwd123
add mylist mylist2 mylist3 quiet <<
user1@nowhere.net
user2@nowhere.net
user3@nowhere.net
>>
delete mylist user0@nowhere.net

Keywords to Avoid

There is a list of email addresses that ListManager will react to. Some of these email addresses provide a function, while others are obsolete. For the purposes of WiscList, we suggest avoiding sending mail to these e-mail addresses, unless explicity noted in the documentation. The list can be found here.

In addition to e-mail addresses, there are specific keywords that should not be placed in certain fields of a message sent to ListManager. They will cause ListManager to reject the message or perform an unwanted task. Some of these keywords are legitimate, but may cause problems if sent by a regular user. If you are having issues with messages being rejected by ListManager, check here for keywords that may be in the rejected messages. The keywords are organized by location:

Body (first line of message)
LOGIN
LOGON
DELETE
UNSUBSCRIBE
REMOVE
PLEASE REMOVE
PLEASE DELETE
PLEASE UNSUBSCRIBE

From:
POST.*MASTER
WPUSER
$EMD
VMMAIL
MAIL .*SYSTEM
MAISER
MAIL.+AGENT
MAIL.+DAEMON
TCPMAIL
BITMAIL
MAILMAN
LISTMAN
LISTSERV
MAJORDOMO
LISTPROC
SERVER
LYRIS$
CRENLIST

Subject:
DELIVERY.*ERROR
DELIVERY.*REPORT
DELIVERY.*PROBLEM
WARNING.*FROM.*UUCP
USER.*UNKNOWN
UNDELIV.*MAIL
UNDELIV.*MESS
PROBLEM.*DELIVER.*MAIL
PROBLEM.*DELIVER.*MESS
CAN.*DELIV.*MAIL
UNABLE.*DELIV.*MAIL
UNABLE.*DELIV.*MESS
MAIL.*DELIV
MESS.*DELIV
FAIL.*MAIL
FAIL.*MESS
MAIL.*FAIL
MAIL.*RETURN
RETURN.*MAIL
MAIL.*ERROR
MAIL.*RECEIV
MESS.*RECEIV
MESS.*DELIV
MAIL.*DELIV
INTERCEPT.*MAIL
WAITING.*MAIL
READ.*RECEIPT
RECEIPT.*NOTIFIC
STATUS.*SIGNAL
ERROR.*CONDITION
NO.*REQUEST.*FOUND
AUTO.*REPLY
AUTO.*GENERAT
AUTO.*ANSWER
WAITING.*MAIL
.*ON.*VACATION
VIA.*VACATION
CONCIERGE.*NOTICE
AWAY.*FROM.*MAIL
CAN.*ANSWER
CAN.*REPLY
OUT.*OFFICE
MESSAGE.*CONFIRMATION
ABWESENHEITSNOTIZ
RECEIPT OF.*MESSAGE
OUT.*TOWN