I don't know what's "proper" but in practice I rarely use the listname.
But I'm a list master and I prefer to get burned before my users do ;-)
The main cause of problems I've experienced is that some other list on
the same system as your list has a star entry that matches your entry,
but _doesn't_ have an entry explicitly the same.  e.g. your list has a
"READ ME" and some other filelist has an entry "READ *" so its users
can FUI or whatever that lists "READ SOURCE" "READ TXT" and "READ DOC".
a "get read me" results in Listserv finding the "read *" in the other
filelist, but it fails to find the "read me" so it returns file not
found, rather than continuing the search.  You probably need to get
your Listmaster to locate the other filelist so either you or the other
owner can alter one of your choice of names.  The last time I had to do
this I just <cover your eyes Eric> logged on as Listserv, stuck an
extra "say" statement in in the LSVSFILE "search" routine and sent me
a get.  But that was a long time ago and I'm irresponsible and I'm only
mentioning it so some shocked expert will recommend the "right" way.
                                              -Kary