Subject: Mailing lists

From: "Lawrence A. Rowe" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2001 12:07:27 -0700

Clifford Setyono-

I received your announcement that you have added an IETF mailing list to
your SnS distribution list using an "opt-out" option - i.e., you force
someone to take action to remove themselves from your list.  That is
rude and inappropriate behavior on the the Internet for two reasons. 
First, including a list on your list without first soliciting approval
from the list manager is wrong.  Consider it similar to me putting a
phone dialing program to work calling your phone and leaving a 30 second
message 5 times a day.  You'd be quite upset at the intrusion.  The same
is true about including a newsletter on a list w/o asking the
participants if they want to receive it.

The second reaons it is rude to use "opt-out" is that most list managers
are unable to handle the automatic removal of someone's email address.
Consider for example, my situation.  My official email address is
[email-masked]. But, for a variety of reasons my name shows up
on mailing lists using over 10 different addresses including:
	[email-masked]
	[email-masked]
	[email-masked]
	...
Now, suppose the actual name on the mailing list is the last one, that
is [email-masked].  Most people use mail management
programs, like majordomo, which say "just send a reply message to remove
your name from the list."  Well, that will never work because I do not
send email from hosts with the names above.

By far the best approach I've seen is to send a message inviting someone
to join a list, describing the list, and giving a URL where someone can
join/leave the list.  Several good programs exist for doing this more or
less automatically through the web, for example see mailman. I wouldn't
mind receiving such a solicitation once a year or so, but I object
violently to receiving 3-5 messages a week on a topic that I have no
interest and cannot remove myself from the list. The second best
approach, and far below the first approach, is what Amazon does. They
send email with a URL that includes the information needed by their
cgi-bin script to delete the database record for the list entry.

So, I *strongly* urge you to modify your use of the Internet and mailing
lists.
	Larry Rowe
-- 
Professor Lawrence A. Rowe          Internet:  [email-masked]
Computer Science Division - EECS       Phone: 510-642-5117
University of California, Berkeley       Fax: 510-642-5615
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776            URL: http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/~larry