Sender Filters

When a message is posted to a Mailman list, a series of steps are taken to decide whether a moderator must approve the message or not. This section contains the controls for moderation of both member and non-member postings.

Non-member postings can be automatically accepted, held for moderation, rejected (bounced), or discarded, either individually or as a group. Any posting from a non-member who is not explicitly accepted, rejected, or discarded, will have their posting filtered by the general non-member rules.

In the text boxes below, add one address per line; start the line with a ^ character to designate a Python regular expression. When entering backslashes, do so as if you were using Python raw strings (i.e. you generally just use a single backslash).

Note that non-regexp matches are always done first.


The default_member_moderation option controls whether new members are moderated by default. If you change this setting, all new (future) members will use the new setting, but all existing members will not be changed. If you decide to change from an open list to a moderated list, you will need to set this to yes and also change all existing members (this can be done on the Membership Management page). This is one of the seven pieces of information requested on the new list request form.


The member_moderation_action option determines what Mailman should do with messages from moderated members.

• Hold will hold the message and notify moderators that a message is pending for approval
• Reject will reject the message and send a rejection notice (set by the member_moderation_notice option, just below)
• Discard will reject the message without sending any notice.

The member_moderation_notice option allows you to set a rejection notice to be sent to anyone whose messages are Rejected.


The accept_these_nonmembers option allows you to add specific email addresses that Mailman should allow to post to the list automatically even though they are not subscribed. This is particularly useful if you have several email addresses you may post from, but only have one subscribed. It can also be useful for announce only lists where none of the subscribers may post but a few trusted people can send announcements without having to receive those announcements.


The hold_these_nonmembers option allows you to add specific email addresses whose postings should be held for moderation.


The reject_these_nonmembers option allows you to add specific email addresses whose postings should be rejected and sent a rejection notice.


The discard_these_nonmembers option allows you to add specific email addresses whose postings postings should be discarded (and sent no notice).


The generic_nonmember_action controls how Mailman should handle mail from non-members not explicitly listed in the handle_these_nonmembers options above.


The forward_auto_discards option allows you to have all discarded messages sent to moderators.