[Asrg] FeedBack loops

[Daniel Feenberg]

On Thu, 13 Nov 2008, John Levine wrote:

>> Expecting people to use the "spam" button will lead to incorrect
>> reports.  Now, if we can get the software triggering the report to
>> generate an unsubscribe request instead, the quality of the feedback
>> loop will be improved.  But that would be something beyond the scope
>> of ARF.
>
> I dunno about you, but whenever I get an ARF report on a message from
> a mailing list, my software treats it as an unsubscribe.  I would be
> surprised if other list managers didn't do the same.

We do the same, and ARF reports are no particular bother to us. The 
members of this list who are incensed by ARF reports are running systems 
whree they do not have the ability to remove names, i.e. they are running 
MTAs for ISPs and want ARF reports limited to those that would justify 
canceling a customer contract. These of course are non-existant if you do 
not send spam.

System administrators in general are not good at empathy, and are quick to 
condem as useless or harmful anything that is not useful to them. Hence 
the overwrought condemnations of ARF in this forum. But of course the ARF 
reports themselves are an instance of AOL not showing empathy for the the 
many receipients who cannot act on an unsubscribe request for non-spam 
messages.

In general, the ARF mechanism has become an inferior substitute for the 
List-unsubscribe header documented in RFC2369 (see also 
http://www.list-unsubscribe.com/ ) but there is no reason that both cannot 
exisit in parallel. AOL should add an "Unsubscribe" button for messages 
with List-unsubscribe headers.

Daniel Feenberg

> R's,
> John
>
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