Info For Moderators
As a moderator, you'll have new commands available to you when dealing with the mailing list – in particular the ability to get the list of subscribers, and manually subscribe/unsubscribe someone (but this should be used sparingly only when users have special circumstances and you've thoroughly vetted that they are who they say they are). If you send email to listname-help@lucene... from your moderator address it will give you the details about the fun new commands.
You will start recieving any messages sent to listname-owner@lucene... from users who need assistance - reply back as best you can, always CC'ing listname-owner@lucene... so the other moderators can chime in and help as needed.
The most common thing you'll ever have to deal with as a moderator is recieving messages with "MODERATE" in the subject (ASF committer's page mailing list moderation sections).
The general rule of thumb is...
- If it's spam, ignore it. The default action is to treat anything that doesn't ever get approved as spam. Do NOT use the reject address for spam because the "reject" option actually sends an email bounce confirming that the domain & email address are "real", which is only likelye to encourage spammers.
- If it's someone trying to subscribe to the list, "reject" it, with a message in the rejection body explaining how to subscribe. It's usually a good idea to CC
listname-owner@lucene...on these rejections so that if the person is really confused and replies back with a question it will go to the right place. - If it's not spam, even if it seems like it's to the wrong list, use "Reply-To-All" to both the "allow" and "approve" Addresses. Doing both will ensure that if that user continues to send email w/o subscribing we won't continously have to allow their messages; and even if it's the wrong list, let it through and let the community point that out.
If you get a persistent spammer, you can block them - see http://untroubled.org/ezmlm/manual/Blocking-an-Address.html#Blocking-an-Address
When in doubt, or if you have any questions, send email to your fellow moderators at listname-owner@lucene... for discussion.