Friendlier "awaits moderator approval text"

[spaetz]

Here is the reaction of Kernel Hacker Neil brown, trying to send a mail to a mailman-member only list. I agree that the standard blurb reads drier and more unfriendly than it could be and I would love to see mailman adopt a text similar to what he proposed:

I tried to identify what I really didn't like about the "Your message awaits moderator approval" email I got and it seems to come down to the "to a members only list" part. It comes across as saying "we are a closed community and aren't interested in what others have to say" - which clearly isn't true, but does seem to be implied by the text.

Had the message been more friendly, e.g.

------------
Thanks for your email with subject: $SUBJECT
As this is your first post to $LISTNAME the message will require approval
by a moderator after which it will, if acceptable, be forwarded to the
list. This normally takes $AVERAGE_WAIT_TIME. Subsequent posts by
you will then be accepted without moderation.
------------

then I would have had nothing to complain about.
I think it is important that newcomers feel welcomed and "members only" doesn't sound welcoming.

[Paul Smith (psmith-gnu)]

A couple of things: first, it would be nice if the message for this were configurable, which today it does not seem to be.

Second, at least in my lists it's not true that if you get one post through, that all "subsequent posts by you will then be accepted without moderation". On my lists if you don't subscribe then EVERY message needs to be moderator-approved. So, I don't think this should be the default text.

[Mark Sapiro (msapiro)]

Actually, the message is configurable, but not by the list owner. It is built from the postheld.txt template which is not currently editable by the list owner, but can be edited and installed either sitewide, domainwide or for a specific list or lists by the site admin. See the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/jYA9> for information on editing templates.

I have marked this as a wishlist item specifically as a request to make this template editable from the list admin GUI.