[Mailman-Users] Unsubscribing not made easy?

[Mark Sapiro]

On 12/7/18 5:06 AM, Christian F Buser via Mailman-Users wrote:
> 
> Today a subscriber of a list sent an empty email trying to unsubscribe. He addressed the message to the list address <listname at domain.com>, with the subject "unsubscribe", and else nothing. But instead of his unsubsciption being processed, Mailman sent a message to the kist owners telling us to approve or reject the message. 
> 
> As a reason it was mentioned "message might contain mailman commands". 


The message was held and the owners were notified because the list's web
admin General Options -> administrivia setting is Yes. If it were No,
the message would have been accepted as a post and delivered to the list
members.


> Of course, at the end of each list message a footer is added mentioning the <listname-requests at domain.com> address - but isn't it a standard alternative procedure to unsubscibe using the command in the subject field of an else empty message? 


If such a message is sent to the listname-request address, it would be
processed as an unsubscribe command.

Given that it was sent to the list posting address, when administrivia
is Yes, the message is held so an owner/moderator can review it and take
appropriate action.


> Is there anything I could do with the list configuration to correct the behaviour? 


The behavior you observed is exactly as intended. If administrivia is
Yes, Mailman attempts to recognize messages with commands sent to the
list rather than -request and hold them for owner/moderator action.
Since it is not possible in all cases to determine the intent of the
sender, it is better to have a human review the message than to have
something that was not intended to be a command be processed as a command.

Mailman is doing the right thing.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan