Steve Atkins wrote:
On Dec 15, 2008, at 3:31 AM, Alessandro Vesely wrote:
Chris Lewis wrote:
Rich Kulawiec wrote:
What I'm arguing (and I've argued this elsewhere) is that it's not
the role of end users to set anti-spam policy (in whole or in part)
any more than it's their role to set firewall policy. It's not
their
job, and they're terrible at it.
I don't think many would argue against that.
I would, for one.
I would too. The defining characteristic of objectionable email
is that recipients find it objectionable. ISPs block mail that
recipients find objectionable or (much more rarely) causes
them operational problems.
So, by that definition, recipients drive mail filtering policy.
I should mention that the conversation that Rich and I were having had a
context that may have been lost or missed along the way - in that we
were talking about corporate, not ISP filters. Secondly, by "set
policy", I take that to mean not only cross-the-board policy for an
_entire_ receiver population, but _setting_ it. That is a radically
different thing than "guide", "drive" or "influence" policy for the
entire population or for individual receivers.
(anti-spam policy is a very vague and broad term, I'm assuming
Rich is talking about inbound mail filtering).
Right: corporate, inbound, cross-the-board.
That in no way prevents an ISP (or corporate) choosing to allow users to
set policy for themselves.
Few ISPs or corporates would be crazy enough to allow their users to
diddle the server-level knobs directly. That is what I think Rich was
speaking to, and what I was.
Because if you do, bad things happen.
That some people are using the tiny, biased samples they
have of the data to drive a broad argument based on the
accuracy of the whole population isn't very surprising either,
but it is a bit of a disappointment that that basic flaw is being
displayed in a research group.
Cuts both ways ;-)
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