Yes, me being only on the senders' side for now is driving some of the bias. I'll work on that. I agree with the rest of your mail, except for "actionable" being equal to "how to deliver this message in future" - I would consider *"we'll never accept mail from you"* to be also very actionable with the action being "don't mail".
Otherwise I think we're on the same page, thank you. On Sun, 25 Jun 2023 at 16:43, Andy Smith via mailop <mailop@mailop.org> wrote: > Hi Dmytro, > > On Sun, Jun 25, 2023 at 02:28:33PM +0100, Dmytro Homoniuk via mailop wrote: > > 450 4.3.2 Local problem - couldn't query foobar blacklist > > > > I do think this very hypothetical example is a bit of an outlier. It's > > providing non-actionable information to the sending system: it should > read > > this and ... erm... reach out to you and tell you you may have your > > blacklist API malfunctioning? > > I think that you are perhaps only considering this from the > perspective of a sender. When it comes to choosing text for SMTP > responses there are many different types of person involved and many > of them will not be thinking about "what will large senders think > about this text?" Even if maybe they should have. > > Obviously you have the software developers of the mail servers > involved. Then you have the administrators of the systems who are > doing what they think is operationally best. Speaking as an > operator, I would previously have not hesitated to include some text > that I, my colleagues, my monitoring systems and any person watching > a port 25 conversation, might find valuable. Yes, it's often better > put in the logs and not sent out on the wire back to a client, but > that was previously not a strong concern for me and I think it's > also very likely not a big concern for many others making these > decisions. > > So should we be putting out best practices documents for software > authors and systems administrators that say: > > When considering responses: > > - Only provide information that is actionable advice for the > client. > > - Err on the side of being terse. Be more verbose in logs only. > > I mean, that sort of advice seems reasonable anyway, but here we are > talking about it not just being reasonable, but in fact the > consequences may be, "or your user's mail may be silently deleted." > > > As as sender I would be very satisfied with *"450 4.3.2 Local problem - > > retry later"* - this way you'd tell me the deferral is not exactly my > > fault, it's you and I'm not expected to figure out the issue on my own. > And > > yes, if it persists - I'd be reaching out to ask about it, so if there is > > anything I can do - I would want it in the response. > > Thing is, many of us thought we were operating in a world where the > text of a response was meant to explain what happened to anyone > interested, not SOLELY for telling senders what they need to do to > get this message delivered in future. What we considered we had at > our disposal for THAT was either 4xx or 5xx and that's it. > > Isn't this an example of senders arguing that the SMTP response is > just for them, at the expense of everyone else who might have got > some use out of it? > > The rest of your message tries to show an equivalence between > Michael deliberately temporarily rejecting an email (as opposed to > because of some unexpected problem) and SendGrid deciding to discard > it without any retries. I've mentioned before that I'm not really > interested in debating that one because my main concern here is the > unintended consequences of this practice. > > Thanks, > Andy > > -- > https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting > _______________________________________________ > mailop mailing list > mailop@mailop.org > https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop >
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