Uhm, yeah, alas, far too often lists get hit with such requests.
Below I copy boilerplate response (alas, as a listadmin) to seeing far
too many such requests (e.g. emails to listadmins, or posts (or
attempted posts) to lists, much etc.), plus with that, just some
modest changes to make it (more) applicable to Debian's lists:
Subject: Debian list(s) unsubscribe
Subscribe/unsubscribe is self-service on Debian lists.
You should be able to take care of subscribe/unsubscribe yourself.
See the reference information (links, etc.) provided further below.
Note also:
o every list posting sent contains
o headers starting with List-
and which include information on how to unsubscribe, get help, etc.
o See also:
o https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/#subunsu
o https://lists.debian.org/
If that still doesn't work for you, please provide:
o The error diagnostic(s) (if any) you're getting when you attempt to
unsubscribe.
o What steps you're following that result in the above (never tell me/us
nor anyone your password(s), but otherwise provide relevant details)
o FULL EMAIL HEADERS of an example message that you're getting or still
getting that you're trying to unsubscribe from.
Hopefully you should be able to self-unsubscribe, but if that fails,
please let us know, as noted above.
Thanks for your attention to this and your cooperation,
The busy Debian / list administrator folks.
Anyway, annoying that there's still some call/need for such responses,
but at least have generally found version of such boilerplate response
to be pretty effective. For the specific lists, they also include some
relevant footer info in message body, so that's also mentioned (alas,
far too many folks can't even bother to read that - that's part of the
problem, so no, adding such is far from a 100% solution). And in the
case of Debian, may want to do something like add link that tells folks
how they can view full email headers, since, alas, many don't know how
to do that (or even what's being talked about), and perhaps bit more
applicable in case of Debian's lists, as there isn't added footers or
headers in body of postings themselves with links (directly or
indirectly) to some of that material. But yeah, after having received
far too many requests, just made the boilerplate response, and any
further such requests just got that ... and seems to work pretty dang
well. Annoying that needing to send such is occasionally rather to
quite called for, but the results are pretty dang effective. Most can
generally reasonably well figure out and do the needed with those
additional almost spoon fed pointers and tips and information. Yeah, I
don't think I've ever yet had one make it so far as to have it not
working and actually following up with relevant diagnostic information.
And the very few that still can't manage after that, and still complain
and request removal ... well, can only do so much.
So, yeah, Debian lists - maybe something like that,
and relevant link about email headers, e.g.:
https://www.google.com/search?q=view+full+email+header
would then cover it.
Maybe "next time" I/we just link to the archived copy of this post. ;-)
On Sun, Jul 20, 2025 at 2:22 AM Mathew Alexander <mat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mathew Alexander
> mat...@gmail.com
> WebRep
> Overall rating
