From: Barry Shein <bzs(_at_)world(_dot_)std(_dot_)com>
Something which keeps coming up in these definitional attempts is that
we seem to go around and around spam as being a personal and/or group
experience.
"Bulk" is a group experience, I only know it is "bulk" because a lot
of other people received it. When I look at one msg on the screen I
have no idea if anyone else received it.
Bulk is a group thing, but the last sentence of that paragraph is not
right. Given a single message, you practically always know whether
it was bulk. If it is bulk it will almost always say so in the text
with something about unsubscribing, not being addressed to you properly,
containing "hash busters" in the Subject or body, having obscured
URLs, and so forth. In the rare cases where the text does indicate
that it is bulk, you can ask a DCC or Vipul's Razor client or Google
on NANAS. System operators can often detect "bulk" by the flood of
double bounces in a postmaster mailbox and other signs.
"Unsolicited" is a personal experience. You may've signed up for
information about body part enlargement, and I haven't, doesn't matter
if it's bulk, for me it's spam, for you it isn't (using the common
definitions of this group, forget my more draconian definitions for
the moment), same msg, same sender.
That is certainly true.
...
I know, dialectic can be tedious; it's more fun to just charge forward
and begin slaying the dragon. But I think we're rushing headlong into
semantics and definitions w/o a lot of (disciplined) thought.
I'd phrase that as rushing headlong into the lexicography or even language
invention business without pausing to consider purposes and goals.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg