At 11:59 PM -0700 3/30/03, Vernon Schryver wrote:
This little drama is related to the spam problem. There is a component
of human nature that hates purposefully not being heard. Senders of
bulk advertising are often irrationally upset about being filtered.
You skipped from "humans" to "senders of bulk advertising" very
nicely there. You weren't cutting off a sender of bulk advertising.
You've also missed the other side of that obvious
statement--purposefully not hearing someone is considered socially
rude. I've had people do that to me more than once--typically after
accusing me of spamming or some other activity that I didn't do.
Someone else on the list put that behavior in exactly the context it
belongs. "Nah, nah... I can't hear you!" Typically with fingers in
ears and tongue sticking out. The word you are looking for is
"juvenile."
This whole conversation has been very educational.
Several times now we have seen people using tools meant for stopping
spammers, as a way of stopping normal human conversation. And they
are doing so without even the common courtesy of notifying their
correspondent. In the real world you would say, "I'm sorry, I don't
want to talk about this any more," or "This will be my last message
on this subject." If the correspondent continues to respond, then
you ignore them. But somewhere along the line the hardcore spam
fighters have gotten so used to blocking messages that they believe
it's socially acceptable to just bounce people's email when they feel
like it. They have a hammer, and they've decided to use it on
anything that looks like a nail.
If this is going to be typical of people's use of anti-spam tools
then I think we should give some serious thought to the UI of such
tools.
For instance, our product doesn't currently bounce messages, but
files them in a junk folder. We've recently added an "unsubscribe"
feature for mailing lists and other mail where we are reasonably
confident that the return address is valid. So rather than doing an
outright bounce, we first give you the option of sending mail to the
sender (and we'll track the results to see if it works) asking them
to stop sending you email. If we add the ability to outright bounce
email, I think I'll make that initial "unsubscribe" option mandatory.
In other words, I'll make the software enforce social standards.
"Thou shalt not bounce people's email without first asking them to
stop sending." It's common courtesy--but apparently it's not as
common as it should be. When we're evaluating spam solutions I think
it would be worth while to consider whether or not the follow a
normal social path for communications. I think that's a large part
of my hatred for challenge/response of any kind. It's extremely
unpleasant to spend a considerable amount of time composing a
message, researching a problem or doing some other amount of work,
put it all together into a note to someone, and then have them come
back and say, "Sorry, I'm not going to listen to you until you do
something I want first." That's the kind of response I expect from
my kids--not an adult.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/ Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology and Society
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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