Subject: RE: [Asrg] More clueless spam bounces

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 13:51:51 -0800

> No.  He called the blacklist of his IP address clueless.  

Actually I called the architecture which causes mail to be
bounced even though the recipient had just sent an email
TO the same address to be clueless. 

And in point of fact, Troy initiated the insults with his
deliberately insulting bounce message. A response to someone
that you have just sent mail to is NOT spam, if you send
a message to someone you implicitly solicit a reply, end
of argument.

If Alice sends an email to Bob, Alice should be able to 
recieve the reply without any further intervention. THAT
is the part of the architecture that is 'clueless'. The 
reason for the blacklisting is irrelevant, Troy has sent
five emails to my _personal_ email inbox but does not feel 
inclined to accept mail from me. I doubt that most people
whose email is blacklisted would have the same attitude
and if their ISP unilatterally introduced a blocking system
of that sort would consider it unacceptable.

It is not that difficult to fix, but it does require a 
more sophisticated conection between the email client
and the email server than we have today. In particular
the email client needs to be able to direct the filtering
of mail as it is downloaded, or the server needs to tag the
email in a standardized form the client can act on.

Exchange has some of these mail handling semantics, but
they are a holdover from the X.400 core of Exchange 5.5.
They are not Internet standards (yet).

I don't see any reason not to fix problems like this 
when it is easy and simple to do so.

		Phill
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---

From: Brad Templeton <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 14:54:11 -0800

Once again, let me state that I doubt anybody cares who insulted who
first in a flamewar.   The rule for flamewars is very simple.  It takes
two to tango.  If one person tries a flamewar on his own, I find that
usually he gives up or people killfile/block him.

If somebody insults you rather than addressing factual arguments, just
let it go.  Really.   It's amazing how well this works.  I know it's
hard to do.  I know it's hard to stay perfect at it, so I don't expect
you to manage every time.  But please, manage most of the time.

When somebody posts an ad hominem, I think less of the _poster_, not the
target.  I only start thinking less of the target if the target responds.
There is no debate to be had when it gets personal, no point which will
be settled.

Just walk away.  This is an IETF list, so we can't bounce people for
responding to flames, but sometimes I sure wish we could. 

Yes, it's hard.  Respond to the flamer in e-mail if this will satisfy
you somehow.   If they block your email then the world will live if
you don't e-mail them.  Get on with the facts.

"But I have to correct false accusations!" you might say.  Well, you
actually don't.  We're really a lot smarter than we look.  We can tell
a smear when we see it.   If somebody politely calls you a pig fucker,
then you can politely deny it, but if he jumps up and down and calls
you that, trust us, we don't give it any credit.

Please don't tell us who started it.  It only makes us think less of
you.

Let's get back to engineering problems:

    a) Refine and agree on the statement of the problem.
    b) Refine and agree on goals to solve the problem and metrics to
       determine success
    c) Refine and agree on technical and philosophical constraints on
       solutions.
    d) Propose and test solutions to the problem
    e) Evaluate how well they solve the problem and fit the constraints.
    f) ...
    g) Profit!
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