> You want to define standards? Let's define some standard for
> establishing permission to mail. If we could solve the
> permission problem, then the filtering wouldn't be such a
> problem, because there wouldn't need to be as much (or maybe
> even any). As a user, I want a way to unambiguously allow a
> specific sender to send me things, "spam" filtering be
> damned. I also want a way to retract that permission, and
> have the mail flow from that sender (or any of their
> "affiliates") to stop.
>
> Right now I've got a solution that allows me to do that, but
> it requires a significant paradigm change, away from
> single-e-mail-address.In general, your "permission to send" idea is a good one to
put in the requirements list for a standard email architecture.
But your particular solution stinks because it simply adds
another bandage to a creaky old email architecture that is
long past its sell-by date.
Yes. I'm well aware of that. My requirements list included that my
solution be able to actually /fix/ something with /today's/ architecture;
this is a practical implementation to solve a real problem, which was
that I was tired of vendor mail being confused for spam.
So, yes, it stinks when compared to the concept of a shiny new mail
architecture. However, it currently works and is successfully whitelisting
the things I intended. I just received a message from a tool battery
distributor that some batteries I ordered months ago are finally shipping.
It was crappy HTML, and I would normally have completely missed it -
probably even forgetting that we had ordered them, certainly not
recognizing the "From" line it came from. It's a success story. Rare.
You are welcome to scoff at it as being a stinky bandaid on a creaky mail
system.
IMHO, the only way that Internet email can be cleaned up is
to create an entirely new email architecture using an entirely
new set of protcols with entirely new port assignments and
no attempt whatsoever to maintain reverse compatibility with
the existing architecture. That is a fair piece of work and
requires a lot of people to get their heads out of the box
and apply some creativity. Many will say that the effort is
doomed before it starts because it is not compatible with
what went before. I don't buy that argument at all.In any case, a new architecture won't come about until we have
some clarity of the requirements of the new architecture. And
that probably has to be hashed out somewhere else, not on any
existing mailing list.
If such a discussion does come about, I want people to understand that
user-controlled permission is a much better fix than arbitrary spam
filtering steps. There's a lot of inertia in the traditional spam
filtering advice, and a certain amount of resistance to considering
that the status quo does not represent e-mail nirvana.
Think of it as making that "unsubscribe" at the bottom of any marketing
e-mail actually work, without argument, without risk.
... JG