Subscribing To and Unsubscribing From Mailing Lists

Mailing lists usually have two different addresses. One address is for subscribing, unsubscribing and other business. The other address is used to get your mail to the people on the list. Think of these two addresses as you would a subscription address versus an address for a letter to the editor in a newspaper. One address is used to start and stop your newspaper subscription and ask about delivery etc. A different address, however, is used if you want to send a letter to the editor for publication in the newspaper.

In electronic mailing lists, the "administrative address" is the address to which you send your subscribe and unsubscribe messages. On all but the Internet lists, the administrative address is a computer which handles this mail. All of the functions are automated and a human being never sees the message. This is why you have to be very careful to address and send these messages properly or the computer will return them because it does not know what you are requesting.

In a subscription message, you send the message to the administrative address, leave the subject line blank and in the body of the message type only the text listed for that type of list (see the Mailing List Commands). Do not leave a signature or any other text in the message or the message might be returned to you. Sometimes, if you find your list on one of the web pages, you can subscribe directly from that page.

The following is the most common method of subscribing to a listserv though variations are common:

To Subscribe to a Listserv
1. You'd send a message to listserv@some.address
2. Leave the Subject line of your message blank. If your mailreader requires you to enter a subject, use several blank spaces.
3. Enter the following text, only, as the body of your message:

subscribe listservname your name

"Your name" should be replaced with your actual first and last names.
4. And send it. That's it!

When you have successfully subscribed to a list, you will get an email message back that describes the group and informs you of any protocol. This "welcome" message will also tell you how to unsubscribe when you are ready, so be sure to hang on to this message! You can create a folder in your email account for mailing list subscription messages. It's a good idea to have such a place, a directory or folder on your computer, to keep subscribe/unsubscribe addresses so you know where to look for them later.

To Unsubscribe from a Listserv
Follow the above steps, but use "unsubscribe (or signoff) listservname" instead of subscribe in the body of your message. Be sure to send the unsubscribe message to the administrative address on the list.