--On Thursday, July 17, 2003 8:48 AM -0400 Vivek Khera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>>>> "GAE" == Geraint A Edwards <Geraint> writes: > We get copies of complaints from AOL customers. It is shocking what > they claim is spam via the "report spam" button -- these are fully > confirmed subscriptions. Heck, they even report the confirmation > request as spam.
This is one of my big gripes with that system. We've all known for years that people have a tendency to join lists without really, somehow, quite knowing that this means they're going to start getting emails :) ... or some office temp uses the departmental account to join EMINEM-L while the regular employee is away ... or people join lists that go moribund and then revive a year later... resulting in outraged emails (publicly posted if you're unlucky) saying "What the hell is this, get me off immediately!" So far so "good" - just part of the joy of the listadmin's job. But when a major ISP gives you a *one-click alternative* to writing that angry email... people are going to use it! Why bother to write back and say "what is this, get me off immediately" when you can just press the handy SPAM button? So now, instead of a human-level misunderstanding you can clear up in the usual way, you are "booked into the system" as a spammer, and you have layers of bureaucracy to untangle before normalcy can be restored. This makes me think - Barry, are you listening? - that it might be a nice idea to have a "diplomacy header" that could be configured into lists. New members would automatically have it pre-pended to each message or Digest that's sent to them, for X number of weeks. It might say something like [ Hi! This is a posting from the EMINEM-L listserv, which you joined on March 5th using the (reply confirmed) email address [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you're not sure why you're receiving these postings, please visit the list information page at http://rockstalkers.org/lists/eminem-l or send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - we'll be happy to help. ] This would require individualized mailings to newbies, but the results might well be worth it. As a refinement, you could automatically "relight" the flag for everybody when a long-dormant list suddenly gets a posting. In fact, it might be worth changing Mailman so that emergency moderation is AUTOMATICALLY enabled when a long-dormant list gets its first posting in X number of months, since it's often a spam or something else bizarre that'll just trigger the "What the hell" flood.
