We advise you to send emails to the mailing lists from an official email address like "treasurer@mychorus.com", instead of a personal email address "janesmith@gmail.com". This is due to policies put in place by Gmail, Yahoo, etc.


However, when you do this, you may have some issues with "moderating" emails. Maybe you've been receiving messages like "As list moderator, your authorization is requested for the following mailing list posting" or "Your mail is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval".


Here is some more information to help you with this:

  1. Why is this happening?
  2. How do I (the webmaster) do this "moderation"?
  3. Is there a shortcut? (Yes!)



1. Why is this happening?


At HarmonySite, we use a specialised program called "Mailman" to run the mailing lists. However, Mailman is not actually part of HarmonySite itself. As a result, it doesn't "know" about all the information in the HarmonySite system – all it sees is a simple list of email addresses.


This causes a problem when someone has multiple email addreses.


For example, imagine that you're the treasurer of your chorus, and you need to send out emails to all the members.


You used to send these emails by selecting "From: Jane Smith (janesmith@gmail.com)".

Now, you select "From: Jane Smith (treasurer@mychorus.com)".


In the members mailing list, Mailman simply knows you as "janesmith@gmail.com".

So, when it sees an email from "treasurer@mychorus.com", it doesn't know who this is.


When Mailman receives an email from someone it doesn't know, it asks someone to decide whether this email should be accepted (and sent out to the whole mailing list). This is called "moderation"; it's usually the task of the webmaster/webmanager.


Moderation is important because we need some restrictions to prevent spammers from sending dodgy emails to all your members! But at the same time, we need to allow legitimate emails to go through, even if they don't come from an email address Mailman recognises.



2. How do I (the webmaster) do this "moderation"?


The first step is to make sure you're receiving the "moderation" emails.


These will usually be sent to "webmaster@mychorus.com" (but some groups have changed this to a different address).

You can confirm this here:

(If you want to change this for whatever reason, click "Retune".)


You may also want to confirm that the webmaster@ email is working correctly.

Click the "Admin" link in the top-right corner to go to your Admin dashboard, then click on the link which says "Email Addresses and Mailing Lists":


You should see something like this:

This is all correct.


If, instead, you see this:

This means that the webmaster@ email is not working. To fix it, click the + icon on the right-hand side.


(If you're having problems with your webmaster@ email, drop us a message at support@harmonysite.com.)



If everything is working, then you should receive emails every so often saying "As list moderator, your authorization is requested for the following mailing list posting".


You should make sure that you always check your spam/junk folder – sometimes the moderation emails end up in there.


When you get these moderation emails:

  1. Click on the big link in the email.
  2. Enter the mailing list password.
  3. Select what you want to do with each email.
    • For example, to allow this email and always allow emails from this person in future:
    • Or, if it's a spammer, then you want to ignore this email and always ignore emails from this person in future:
  4. Once you've finished, click Submit All Data at the bottom of the page.


For more detailed instructions, see our main help guide on moderating mailing lists: https://harmonysite.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/43000207435-mailing-lists#moderation



3. Is there a shortcut?


Yes, there is a shortcut!


We can tell Mailman to automatically approve any email which comes from an "official" email address ending in @mychorus.com. For example, "treasurer@mychorus.com", "membership@mychorus.com", or "director@mychorus.com".


From September 3rd 2024, this will happen automatically when you "tune" a mailing list. To do this:


  1. Go to the mailing list's page and click "Retune":
  2. Select the option which reflects the purpose of the mailing list.
    (For more information on this, see Tuning a Mailing List.)
  3. Click Submit.


The mailing list will now allow emails from any official address ending in @mychorus.com.


If you want to alter this setting manually, you can follow these steps:

  1. Go to the mailing list's page and click the link which says "Administer this list via external Mailing List Management Console (Mailman)":
  2. Click Privacy options...
  3. ...then Sender filters:
  4. Scroll down until you see this setting which says "List of non-member addresses whose postings should be automatically accepted":
  5. Here, we want to add a special code.
    The code is ^[^@]+@mychorus.com – where you replace mychorus.com with your actual domain name.
    For example, if your chorus is: southvalleychorus.com...
    ...then the special code is: ^[^@]+@southvalleychorus.com
  6. Add this code to the box on the right:
  7. Scroll down to the bottom and click Submit Your Changes.
  8. Finally, you'll need to repeat this process for each mailing list.



More information


How do I find out the "mailing list password"?


Click the Update button here:

(While you're here, if you want to deal with the moderation requests, you can click "Administer this list via external Mailing List Management Console (Mailman)", then click "Tend to pending moderator requests" in the top-right corner.)


How can I see the email to decide whether to approve it?


There will be a copy of the email below the message you got saying "As list moderator, your authorization is requested for the following mailing list posting".


Alternatively, you can click the number [1] in the middle to see a small preview (but this isn't easy to read).


See also