On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, Pete Weiss wrote:
> Hal has hit a nail on the head -- this is one of those "value adds" that
> a list-owner can provide -- getting involved in the problem source
> identification and resolution of "email" problems.  Often, they go beyond
> the list itself, and are institutional/ISP parameterization or design
> problems e.g., mail rejected because it discusses a "bad" word, as
> opposed to being that "bad" word such as p o r n.

Yes, but listowners have only so much time they can devote to such
activity - I can only get stuff like this fixed one subscriber/site
at a time - and often trying to fix it is futile (either the subscriber
or site won't work with you).

There is never spam on my lists, nor are there gratuitous "bad" words
(I call them "naughty" or "no-no" words), but due to the nature of my
lists (say, the word is part of the title of a book), they come up, and
must.

I know some systems check only the Subject:, and I change such which
contain "hit" words known to me.  But it drives me up the wall when I
get an error message of type "xxxxxx does not like content" for a posting
on one of my lists, and especially when that is for a digest (my digests
are text/plain ONLY).

I loath spam.  But, from being a listowner from before the first list spam,
the "Green Card" nasty, I'm not sure I don't detest all the spam filters
more (I was in on the initial attempts to block spam but dropped out when
it became clear that the radicals were prevailing (in my opinion, the
radical anti-spammers, etc, are as bad as the spammers)).
And that goes triple for "naughty word" filters and their promoters.

Douglas Winship      [log in to unmask]