[Mailman-Developers] Functional design issue - optional passwords

[John Evershed]

Why not simplify the unsubscription process so that it can not only
be easily be done by forgetful users but also by dumb agents?

Most mailing lists allow a simple UNSUBSCRIBE in either subject or
body to trigger an unsubscription confirmation message being sent
to the apparent user, with a random token which must be returned in
the reply. This could be the default mailman behaviour when a password
is omitted.

A lot of people in the mailing list community obviously think that the
mail unsubscription process should be both simple and standard -
eg the RFC authors who proposed the new mailing list headers such as
"List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:list-request@domain?subject=unsubscribe>".