On Sunday 16 November 2003 11:21, you (ESR) wrote:
Marc A. Pelletier <marc(_at_)ctrl-alt-del(_dot_)ca>:
"A sender is /not/ spamming if he sends a message with the justified
expectation that the recipients (however many) are not going to perceive
the message as spam."
Interesting idea, but that double negaive is confusing and has to go.
Grammatically, yes, but I'd be loathe to reverse the sense of the statement.
If we were trying to draft a legal document (which I realise we're not) this
would be an 'active defense'; we're not saying what spam is, but we're
allowing one way to determine what isn't.
"A sender is spamming if he sends a message without the justified
expectation that the recipients (however many) are not going to perceive
the message as spam."
How is that? English is not my native language, so while I still perceive two
negations it might still be grammatically sounder (and clearer)?
I'm a bit worried, though, because I think that also changes the meaning in a
sublte and undesirable way; am I the only one to read that version as
defining a restrictive metric for spam rather than defining a "this is not
spam and here's why" defense?
Though if this is acceptable, it allows us to clean up the statement and take
the sender out entierly:
"A message is spam if it was sent without the justified
expectation that the recipients (however many) are not going to perceive it as
spam."
Stiill two negatives in there, though. The problem is that "[...] was sent
with the justified expectation [...] are going to perceive it as spam."
doesn't mean the same thing at all even though the two negatives are
reversed.
You are a considerably better wordcraft in english than I, so I appreciate
your input on this.
-- Marc A. Pelletier
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