Awele Documentation Reap what you share

Preliminary remarks

1. As for managing subscribers, you can operate either in the Web environment with the Sympa interface, or in your e-mail application. However, the functions provided by Sympa ("Moderate" tab in the "List admin" menu) only allow the moderator to validate or reject messages but not to modify them before validating them. If you need to modify the messages, i.e. to improve their layout and add translations, we have created a special page at http://www.forums.[your list domain name]/approve , for example, http://www.forums.socioeco.org/approve where you can approve and send modified messages from the Web. This allows you to send a modified message with the original author as the sender in the "From" line.

2. All messages for the forum arrive at the moderator’s address with Sympa as the sender and with the Subject: "Confirm [a cookie corresponding to the message]".

Posting without changes

From your e-mail application: 

To validate publication of the message as such, follow instructions in the e-mail you've received.

If you wish to reject it, you need to go the Sympa interface.

From the Sympa interface:

1. In the left hand column, click "Message" under "Moderate."

2. Select the message you wish to post or reject. Click on the message Subject is you wish to read the message first.

Distribute: posts the message as such.
Reject: rejects the message and deletes it.
Notified reject: rejects the message, deletes it, and sends a message to the author of the message notifying him or her that the message has been rejected.

Posting a modified message

When you need to make changes (for example, by adding translations or changing the layout), copy and paste the message content to a word processor, such as Word, so that you can format the text and translate it (checking the title, adding an abstract, checking spelling, layout, etc. then adding one or more machine translations, revised for mistranslation only). 

You will need the "cookie" for your list, which is a string of characters for the exclusive identification your list. The cookie must remain confidential. Anyone who knows it can post messages to your forum. To find the cookie for your list, go to your forum administration page, click "Edit list" under "Admin" in the left-hand column, then "Miscellaneous."

From the Sympa interface:

Highly recommended: much safer and much easier than from your e-mail software. 

1. Go to http://www.forums.[your list domain name]/approve , for example, http://www.forums.socioeco.org/approve, 

2. Select your forum from the “Nom de la liste” pull-down menu. 

3. Fill in all the fields, then click on “Envoyer” at the bottom of the screen. 

From your e-mail application: 

Send a message to approve@[your forum domain name], for example, approve@forums.alliance21.org or approve@socioeco.org.

The message sender is not relevant.

Leave the "Subject" line empty. You need to have two sections in the message body:

• a first block of 5 lines followed by a blank line;
• the message sent by the participant now with your modifications.

In the first block you need to write, in identical form, the following headings:

From: enter the first name, last name and, between < >, the e-mail address of the participant who wrote the message;

To: enter the address of the list. You must only enter an email address, without any text/comments or typographical characters;

Subject: write the subject of the message (a "title" which will encourage participants to open the message)

Please note: Although we now recommend that you use accents and other diacritic marks in the message body, you must never use them in the "Subject", either here or anywhere else. This is the field that is most likely not to be able to interpret the codes for these signs or for accents, and the people receiving the message could thus get an illegible Subject line.

Approved: enter the e-mail of one of the list moderators. Do not write the name or <>, just the e-mail.

Cookie: enter the cookie for your forum (see above).

The first line must be the “From:” line. You must not leave a blank line at the top of the message. The fields can be written in lowercase or uppercase, it makes no difference at all, and there can be spaces at the beginning of the line and after, but never before the colon “ :”.

Example:

From: Mary SMITH <mary.smith@hotmail.com>
To: work@socioeco.org
Subject: Message approval procedure
Approved: pses-sp@alliance21.org
Cookie: e3dc1ad2e553e2722e2a4288d24578d

ENGLISH --> FRANÇAIS

** Message approval procedure: please follow instructions carefully**
by Françoise Wautiez, pses-sp@alliance21.org

* Abstract: Formatting messages....*
etc.

Please note: This forum format only accepts text-only format. No attached files, no html code and no formatting (bold, italics, colors, etc.) are allowed. Do not forget to check that your e-mail software is set up to send messages in text-only format.

Possible mistakes

If the system does not decode your message correctly, you will receive a message containing:

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- "|/usr/local/bin/sympa_moderation /etc/mail/sympa/cookies" (reason: 3) (expanded from: <approve@socioeco.org>)

The figure after the word reason (3 in this example) tells you what the problem is:

• 1 : problem during sending of the message to Sympa
• 2 : problem with the value in the From or To line
• 3 : cannot find the cookie corresponding to the list indicated in the To line, check this value
• 4 : internal problem
• 5 : internal problem
• 6 : problem with the Cookie field, incorrect value for this list

For codes 1, 4 and 5, please send a message to the [users] list so that the problem can be solved. For the other codes, you need to send the message again after correcting the errors indicated.

The Web interface described above generates more explicit and immediate error messages.

After the messages are sent

Depending on how you have configured your list, either the message will be posted directly on the list with the sender displayed as the message author, or the message will be sent to you for approval or rejection. In the second case, follow the instructions in the message received or go to the administration page for your list in the Web environment (Login > “admin” button to the left of your forum address), click on "Moderate", check the message in question, then click on "Distribute".

The message approved in this way will be published directly on the list, i.e. sent to all the addresses of the people subscribed to your forum.

If you have approved the message by e-mail, you will receive the following message, sent by sympa@[your forum domain name]:

the message bad3776abe5170934629f9d6b9a6fa30 for the list [list name] has been distributed.

Attached documents

The Sympa Awele lists are configured by default not to accept attached files. We therefore advise you to upload any documents you wish to circulate to the "Shared documents" section of your list’s Web interface and to send a message giving people the address of the Web page (URL) where the document is available.

Storing messages

What do you do with the original message? The one that Mary Smith sent you and which you translated.

• We advise you to store the message in your e-mail software in case of arguments over your modifications/translations.
• On the Sympa Web page (Login > “admin” button to the left of your forum address), click on "Moderate", check the message in question then click on "Reject". This means that the author, Mary Smith, will not receive the automatic rejection message from Sympa.