WebMod - a unified moderation interface for ezmlm

This is a brief introduction to the WebMod interface and the actions you can take there.

What you can moderate

Every ASF committer who is a member of a PMC or PPMC may log on and use the WebMod interface. For each PMC or PPMC you are on, you have access to moderate all of that project's lists. For example, if you are on the httpd PMC, you may moderate all `@httpd.apache.org` lists.

Interface primer

The WebMod interface has a tabbed panel, with one tab for each mailing list that you have access to that has one or more emails awaiting moderation, and/or emails that have been marked as spam. The header of each tab has two numbers separated by a slash: the first number is how many emails need moderation; the second number is how many emails in this list have been marked as spam, but not yet deleted (see more on marking and deleting spam emails, below).

At the top left is a control that allows you to display or hide emails that one or more moderators have marked as spam.

To moderate a list, click the tab with the name of the list. To preview the first couple of lines of an email body, click the subject line. Click again to dismiss the preview.

When you have assessed an email, you may choose one of four actions for it, as described in the next paragraph. These actions take place instantly, and other users see the result when they use the interface. Thus, if you accept or reject an email, it disappears from the list of pending requests for all other WebMod users with access to moderate that list.

Note: Once you have accepted or rejected an email, you cannot undo the action. It is not possible to cancel an email that has been accepted, nor to accept an email that has been rejected. So please be careful.

If you have incorrectly marked an email as spam, you can override by using accept or reject as appropriate.

Moderation actions

As a moderator, you have access to the following actions for each email in the moderation queue:

• accept: Accept the email as is, and moderate it through to the mailing list.
• accept+allow: Accept the email as is, and moderate it through to the mailing list. Also add the sender to the `allow` list. Note that this applies to the envelope sender (Return-Path in the source), which may not be the same as the From: header. There is no point doing so for the dynamic addresses some bots use.
• reject: Reject the email and inform the sender of the rejection. You may write a short message explaining why you have rejected the email.
• deny: Deny the sender from future posts to this list. Note that this applies to the envelope sender (Return-Path in the source), which may not be the same as the From: header. There is no point doing so for the dynamic addresses many spammers use.
• spam: Mark the email as spam, and relegate it to the end of the listing. If three people mark the same email as spam, it is permanently deleted without notifying the sender. This can be useful for legit spam, where we do not wish to honor/humor the sender with a reply.
• text: If the email body preview is not sufficient for establishing what action to take, select the text link to view the entire email body.
• source: If the email body preview is not sufficient for establishing what action to take, select the source link to view the raw email source.
• html: If the email only has a rudimentary plain text entry which says something like: 'This email must be viewed in HTML', select the html link to view the text (only) of the HTML part.

To end your session, click the Log out link.