but before i do that.. just wanted to say that even if a post is
on topic, it can still be considered spam .. :-)
- everybody's definition of spam is different
You can say that if you want, but you would be wrong, just as wrong as if you said "the sun rises in the west and sets in the east".
When you have subscribed and confirmed your subscription request to a discussion list, and someone else sends a message to that list that conforms with the list's rules (and thus is "on topic"), that message is NEVER SPAM. You opted-in to the list! In doing so, you explicitly requested/solicited to accept all email from that list.
Requested/solicited email is, by defintion, the opposite of spam (which is, by any accepted definition, ALWAYS *unsolicited* email, with or without additional qualifications such as "commercial" or "bulk").
Attempting to redefine spam as "any email I don't like" makes the term spam useless, for you and for everyone else. We already have a perfectly good word for that type of email, it is "unwanted". Just because an email is unwanted does not make it spam! When some small fraction of list email is unwanted by an individual, the correct response is to use your delete key or your filters to discard it. When this fraction becomes too high for you to tolerate, unsubscribe. Duh?
jc
