Mailman De-Spam Tool

The problem:

I administer a Mailman mailing list for a worthwhile cause. These days I'm getting a lot of unsolicited emails. Mailman provides a web interface for administrators to review and discard emails.

Clicking 30 or so radio buttons a day is getting tedious!

My Solution:

I've written a utility app that gropes around Internet Explorer pushing discard buttons for me.

The Old Manual Way:

Search the page for key words. If any valid email are found, I approve them, the click "Submit". Then with the rest I:

Scroll the page...

Click the button...

Repeat the above 34 times, then click "Submit"...

The New Way:

Using IE, go to the Mailman admin page. Run the utility app. A "DOS box" will appear and then disappear. All the "Discard" radio buttons are set. Then click "Submit"...

(I think you'll find that's a lot quicker, and gives a strange sense of satisfaction.)

The Code

The utility app is here.

The source code is here. You may want to read through it if you're interested in programmatically working with IE. It's crafted in the finest honed C#.

mshtml and SHDocVw are the .NET wrappers for Internet Explorer and Shell COM interfaces.

More information can be found on these beasties by web searching for:

 

Last update 29/12/04. nick@anotherurl.com