Your response focuses on a single point, which is that EFF should be using verification on their mailing list. This point may be valid, but it seems weak to me, and it misses the point.
It seems reasonable to assume that many, if not most, individuals who are both razor users and EFF subscribers became EFF subscribers intentionally, and wish to receive the EFF newsletter. Yet a minority of Razor users can report that newsletter as spam -- whatever their reasons -- and block it from everyone, unless a significant number of the intended recipients notice and revoke the report. Others can and probably will correct me if I'm wrong here; honestly, the details of how the TeS (Truth Evaluation System) weights reporters and revokers is vague to me, but my point remains valid: Someone made a similar point earlier in this thread: Razor's inherent limitation (as well as its strength) is that it's a group effort, whereas spam is in the eye of the (individual) beholder. E.g., I'm signed up for certain newsletters from monster.com, but others among you frequently report them as spam. Your categorization of monster mail as spam is valid for you, my doing the opposite is valid for me, but that ain't Razor's thing. There is no you and me, there's only us, and if you think we all agree what spam is, or even what "unsolicited" means, think again. The only thing we all (presumably) agree on is that we all hate spam when we see it.
And Marc needs to understand this: The Razor system is working as designed, and that's what's causing his problem. And incidentally, I don't think that validating emails will necessarily make that problem go away.
Back to my ignorance about the TeS: Can you or anyone else explain precisely how this works? The TeS assigns a weight 0-100 for each of us. How are weights assigned exactly? Is it enough for a single reporter with a strong weight (or a small number of such reporters) to force a message to be spam if no one revokes his report?
Leland
Bob Apthorpe wrote:
Hi,
Marc: Please, please, please - read what I've written, fix EFFector's confirmation process to comply with the guidelines at http://mail-abuse.com/manage.html - specifically "Permission of new subscribers must be fully verified before mailings commence."
Reconfirm your mailing list. Take data on the number of times your mailing is flagged as spam by Razor before and after the change. If the number of Razor reports does not decrease within eight weeks of confirming your mailing list, come back with data in hand, leave the Frea Speach & censorship phraseology at the door and maybe someone with access to the innards of Razor can help you solve the problem.
And please, please, please - if you're going to respond to my posts and point out where I may be uncertain, if not wrong, at least have the courtesy to accede when I'm right. As it is, you excised the bulk of my arguments, leaving a few niggling pieces of opinion to argue over[1]. Remember your high school debate - a dropped argument is a lost argument.
Other people: Please, please, please don't abuse Marc for suggesting that Razor's trust model may not be perfect. All software is flawed[2] and we should not immediately chastise people who suggest our favorite code is imperfect. And while you may get some small satisfaction calling him names, impugning his powers of cognition, analysis, and synthesis, etc., overall it just wastes a lot of bandwidth.
----
I've carried this argument on too long, I've suggested a course of
action for Marc and tried to defend what intelligent points he was
trying to make (i.e. any anti-spam system should be designed to avoid
malicious use.)
However, it's clear to me Marc is more than willing to call out perceived flaws in Razor but is less than willing to fix what he can within his sphere of influence, or even to admit his organization's system may be as or more flawed than Razor. Until he's willing to honestly accept and address his own system's shortcomings, I don't see any further point in belaboring this, on-list or off.
-- Bob
[1] I'm formally trained as an engineer so I feel ethically bound not to state with certainty things that I am not certain about. In "Revising Prose" by Richard Lanham, this practice is called out; what the engineer considers responsible professional communication is taken by non-engineers as a weak argument, the same way some deride evolution as being a 'theory', mere speculation rather than the best current model.
This is an unfortunate gulf in communications between the technician and the layman, who only wants to know if he should worry more about his toaster exploding and burning down his house than being eaten by a bear while walking to the mailbox. The engineer can only ask "Where do you live?" and "What kind of toaster?" instead of smiling sweetly, remarking "I'd worry more about car accidents and heart disease," then driving home for a well-deserved dinner of steak and ale.
[2] Except maybe TeX.
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