On Thu, 18 Jun 1998, Peter Rauch wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Jun 1998, Listserv Admin wrote:
> >
> > LSOFT, stay out of "policy enforcement" as it relates to List Owner
> > management unless you think long and hard about the consequences.
>
> LSoft is not in the business of policy enforcement. It's in the business
> of providing a rich set of software-configurable options to List Owners
> and Subscribers.

Peter, if you read the 2 previous lines before my statement, I stated
pretty clearly enough that I was starting with an exaggerated statement.
However, It is a lot easier for List Owners to insert "sizelim= 200" in
their list header and announce it, than have to deal with subscribers who
violate it deliberately.  There is also the daily-threshold= keyword
(there are more).  These are software options in Listserv that certainly
grew out of list policy enforcement issues that Lsoft was in the business
of discussing and providing.  Your comment may be about semantics, but
that wasn't the point of my mail.

> > I wonder, how far do you go when you start asking a vendor to make their
> > software assume a responsibility
>
> It is not the _vendor_ who is being asked to make their software assume
> a responsibility. It is the list _owner_ or the list _subscriber_ who is

  You misunderstood my post (or my post was a reply to mail you did
not read).  What I was expressing was a concern about providing software
solutions so that eventually, any responsibility of learning what is and
is not appropriate list behavior is removed from the subscriber.  This has
always made me a bit uneasy because I tend to wonder if we are doing
subscribers any favours.

> > ...  For one reason or another (and I know there are
> > many), some List Owners would prefer to find a software/technical solution
> > rather than be put in the position of having to enforce the posting policy
> > of their list. Here, some List Owners will look for every opportunity to
> > "enforce a policy" and feel insulted if you give them a software solution
> > while others will feel very inadequate.
>
> What's so nice about a rich set of software features is that it allows
> _both_ kinds of people to operate in peaceful co-existence. Those who

I'm saying that dealing with difficult subscribers has always been part of
the challange of List Ownership and carries with it some benefits, and my
mail expressed a concern about future software solutions eliminating that
challange altogether.  That was the point.  That is the consequence of
choice.

--Trish