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Re: [Asrg] FeedBack loops

2008-11-13 16:54:36
On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 08:21:58AM -0800, Steve Atkins wrote:
     - in error
     - as a substitute for unsubscribing
     - as a means of expressing disagreement with message content
     - as a means of expressing antipathy toward message sender


Note that three out of four of those are people telling you
that you're sending them mail they don't want to receive.

Maybe.  But how am I supposed to read their minds and figure out which of
those possibilities (or other ones that didn't occur to me) are in play?
All I can know for sure is that they have pushed a button labeled
"report as spam" in reference to a message that is not spam.  Everything
beyond that is guesswork.

So maybe you're right.  Maybe they don't want to be on that particular
mailing list any more, or maybe they don't want any more mail on that
particular topic, or maybe they don't want any more mail from that
particular fellow list-member, or maybe something else entirely...
but there's no way for me to know which.  (Well, unless I ask them and
they answer, and given the volumes involved, that's not very practical.)

So maybe you're not right.  Given the facts-in-hand, how am I to tell?

I have, by the way, in the case of *some* lists, tried the approach
of removing those reporting ordinary list traffic as spam.  One of the
things I've noticed is that a significant percentage re-subscribe,
then subsequently report more ordinary list traffic as spam.  I've even
noticed a handful of people reporting *their own messages to a list* as spam.


Let me see if I can put this in a larger context.  Feedback loops
are often used as (partial) input to operational SMTP policies.
Those policies, along with HTTP and FTP and SSH and DNS and other
policies, are all part of a bundle I consider "site security policy".
I don't think it's a good idea to hand users a knob that controls
any part of that.

---Rsk
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