sendmail, 4th Edition

Users Ignore list-request

It is impossible to cause all users to interact properly with a mailing list. For example, all submissions to a list should (strictly speaking) be mailed to list, whereas communications to the list maintainer should be mailed to list-request. As a list maintainer, you will find that users mistakenly reverse these roles surprisingly often.

One possible cure is to insert instructions in each mailing at the start of the message. In the header, for example, Comment: lines can be used like this:

Comment: "listname" INSTRUCTIONS
Comment: To be added to, removed from, or have your address changed
Comment: in this list, send mail to "listname-request".

Unfortunately, user inattention usually dooms such schemes to failure. You can put instructions everywhere, but some users will still send their requests to the wrong address.

A solution some sites use when the list is used only for official and rare mailings is to install the list name in the aliases file just before the mailing:

list:        :include: /usr/local/lists/official.list     ← before

Then run newaliases(1) and send mail to the list. After all the mail for the list has been queued, edit the aliases file, comment out that entry, and create a new one:

#list:        :include: /usr/local/lists/official.list     ← after
list:   owner-list

Run newaliases(1) again, and you will have disabled that list. That way, mail that is wrongly sent to list will be received only by the list’s owner (who can notify the sender of the error) instead of wrongly ...