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2268
How can I configure my mailing list to prevent specific addresses from joining it?


  1. Open your list's admin web page (https://lists.sussex.ac.uk/mailman/admin/listname, where listname is the name of your mailing list).
  2. After having gained entry, click the Privacy Options link.
  3. Scroll down to the option box labelled "List of addresses which are banned from membership in this mailing list".
  4. In the box, enter either the exact email address you wish to ban from joining your list, or, if you want to prevent addresses from an entire domain from joining your list, enter the following expression in the box:

    ^.+@domain


    where domain is the email address's domain. For example, to ban addresses from zeusmail.org from joining your list, enter the following expression exactly as shown, like this:

    ^.+@zeusmail.org

  5. Click the 'Submit Your Changes' button button to put this change into effect.
  6. Click the Logout link to close your admin page.

If you're curious:

The expression "^.+@domain" is called a regular expression, used for text pattern matching, and is broken down as follows:

'^' means "the start of the email address",

'.'  means "any character",

'+' means "one or more of the previously specified characters", and

'@domain' represents that part of an email address that starts with the @ symbol.

So, the expression ^.+@zeusmail.org is used (in the context of this Mailman mailing list option only) to represent any email address that ends with @zeusmail.org.

If you're really curious:

There are various guides and tutorials to regular expressions on the web.  For example, see:
www.zytrax.com/tech/web/regex.htm

 

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This is question number 2268, which appears in the following categories:

    Created by Andy Clews on 18 March 2011 and last updated by Richard Byrom-Colburn on 29 September 2016