5.2 How do I leave a list? (unsubscribe)

Don't want to be on a list any more? If you're just going on vacation or are too busy to read mails and want to temporarily turn them off, you may want to stop mail delivery rather than unsubscribing. This means you keep your password and other settings so you can, for example, still have access to private list archives. If this is what you'd prefer, see Section 7.1 for instructions on disabling mail delivery temporarily.

If you actually want to leave the list, there are two common ways you can unsubscribe from a Mailman mailing list.

Using the web interface:

Go to the list information page for the list you want to leave. (This will probably be something like http://WEBSERVER/mailman/listinfo/LISTNAME)
Look for the section marked ``LISTNAME subscribers'' (usually found near the bottom of the page).
There should be a button marked ``Unsubscribe or Edit Options.'' Enter your email address in the box beside this button and press the button.
You should be brought to a new page which has an ``Unsubscribe'' button. Press it to unsubscribe and follow the instructions given.

Using the email interface:

Open a mail program which sends mail from the address you want to unsubscribe.
Send a mail to the list unsubscribe address, which will be of the form LISTNAME-leave@DOMAIN. The subject and body of this message will be ignored, so it doesn't matter what you put there.

After following one of these sets of instructions (you don't need to do both!), you will be sent a confirmation mail and must follow the instructions given in that mail to complete the unsubscription. This is to stop people from unsubscribing you without your permission. In addition, a moderator may need to approve your unsubscription. (Administrator-approved unsubscriptions are uncommon.)

If you do not receive this confirmation mail with instructions, make sure that you typed your email address correctly (if you were using the web interface to unsubscribe) and that the address you tried to unsubscribe is, indeed, actually subscribed to that list. For security reasons, Mailman generates the same member options page regardless of whether the address entered is subscribed or not. This means that people cannot use this part of the web interface to find out if someone is subscribed to the list, but it also means that it's hard to tell if you just made a typo.

Once your unsubscription has been processed, you will will probably receive another message confirming your unsubscription from the list, and at that point you should stop receiving messages.

If you wish to skip the confirmation process (for example, you might be unsubscribing an address which no longer works), it is possible to bypass it by using your password instead and either logging in to your options page using it (See Section 3.1), or sending it with your email commands to LISTNAME-request (See Appendix A for advanced email unsubscription commands). See Section 6.1 for more information on getting your password.