On Wednesday 18 February 2004 03:11, Meng Weng Wong wrote:
"fail" means reject, "softfail" means score as spam, save to spam
folder, etc.
Domain owners need to be able to transition from "neutral" through
"softfail" to "fail" at their discretion, and we should respect their
wishes.
This is one of the reasons why the existence of 'softfail' worries me - it
makes too many assumptions about how mail will be processed. Indeed it
appears to dictate policy instead of being policy-neutral.
It is not good to assume that users have a 'spam' folder - I for example do
not - nor can we assume that any 'scoring engine' is being run.
Both a scoring system (if it is being used to any purpose) and/or a spam
folder are conceptually similar to a 'fuzzy delete', which makes SMTP
unreliable in terms of delivery to the end user.
What I mean by delivery is the end-user's eyeballs actually seeing it, not
just some intervening automaton.
I don't see how any fuzzy-delete concept can be made compatible with a
delivery system attempting to acheive reliability.
The existence of 'softfail' compels the use of fuzzy-delete systems in order
to fully comply with SPF, which in turn forecloses on the goal of
reliability.
If delivery reliability cannot be acheived, email will stop being useful
except as a toy.
- Dan