Re: blacklists
On Wed, Dec 08, 2004 at 03:38:36PM -0700, Michael Loftis wrote:
> --On Thursday, December 09, 2004 01:12 +1100 Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
> wrote:
>
> >if it's a false positive, the sender will get a bounce from their MTA and
> >they can fix the problem or route around it. IMO, that's far nicer to
> >legit senders than them not knowing that their mail isn't being delivered
> >because it's stuck in their MTA's queue rather than bouncing back to them
> >- the former means it's probably 5 days before they know there is a
> >problem, while the latter gives them instant feedback.
>
> You massively over estimate the intelligence of email users. Far far
> over-estimate it.
no, it's just that i don't give a damn about the dumb ones. if they're too
dumb to figure it out, then they're too dumb to be using the net.
i'd rather provide help & useful information to the smart ones than spoonfeed
dumb users. no matter how much you spoonfeed dumb users, they'll still cause
you problems and cost you time & money. best of all, providing useful
information also gives a potentially educational experience to all, with a
small but real chance of starting them on the path towards being a smart user.
(in short, my unshakably firm belief about tech support has always been that
education is far better than spoonfeeding. education works in the long run,
spoonfeeding is just begging for an eternal problem)
> When we were doing 5xx returns, about a dozen bounces a day were
> reported as SPAM to my abuse address.
never happened to me. if it ever did, i'd probably just ignore it. at most,
i'd reply "this is not spam, it's a bounce", and include a URL to a page with
information about how mail works. i certainly wouldn't waste much time on it.
> Further more, most people do not understand bounce messages, at all.
yes, i've seen that thousands of times. the common occurence is some idiot
user forwarding you the bounce message that clearly states "user unknown" or
similar and asking you "why did this bounce?"
if i'm in a bad mood, i'll reply and say something like "'User unknown' means
that the user is unknown".
or if i'm feeling particularly helpful, i may expand on that and give them some
suggestions on what to do or try.
either way, in any reply i'll *always* point out that the answer to their
question was right there in front of them - all they had to do was make the
trivial effort to read it.
> If they ever get the bounce message, increasingly I'm seeing the owrrying
> trend that bounce messages from MTAs end up as SPAM or just /dev/null-ed.
you're not responsible for the stupid things that other people do.
> Anyway there certainly ARE merits to both sides, and I can and do
> understand and see your point. I don't like the log chatter but that's
> easy to deal with compared to our L1 support time when we 5xx. People get
> stupidly angry sometimes too 'you have no right to bounce my mail!' that's
> like saying the post office has to deliver all bombs, but logic has nothing
> to do with most people :)
yes, i've seen that too. the obvious response is that the post office can't
deliver misaddressed mail either. if you send a snail-mail letter with the
wrong address on it, the post office can't magically correct it. if you're
lucky, you'll get it returned back to you. most likely, it will just sit on
the hall-stand of the wrong address along with all the other misaddressed mail
and mail for people who used to live there that they receive.
just because they're angry doesn't make them right. if they won't listen to
reason, then ignore them. you've done your best, that's all that can be asked
of you.
craig
--
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> (part time cyborg)
Reply to: