[Mailman-Users] more questions about Yahoo feedback loop and abuse complaints

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David writes:

 > Is there any method to identify the user from the AOL feedback loop?

Not for sure.  Over time, they seem redact ever more information from
the report.

 > If not, how does AOL expect us to unsubscribe the user who complained?

Why would they care?  Customers rarely remember accidently hitting the
spam button (or rarely admit it -- even your user who wants your mail
doesn't remember doing so), although *we* can be pretty sure they do
so frequently.  So it's easy for them to blame the lists, saying that
the lists have passed spam, and the lists are just trying to shift
blame to the users.  So the big ISPs for "nontechnical users" maintain
a position of "fix your spam problem and you'll be OK" to some degree.
And the complaining user doesn't have a problem any more (not with
your list) since it's blocked.  Few non-technical users consider such
severe reaction to spam inappropriate, as far as I can tell.  And
blocking mail costs them nothing in terms of real resources, since
there's so much genuine spam out there.

OTOH, as far as I can tell, the big ISPs consider lists competition,
not complements (and I think they're correct[1] -- they want users
using their web fora).  So they have little incentive to allocate
resources to making lists work smoothly.


Footnotes: 
[1]  Barry is only half-joking when he says he hopes Mailman 3 will
kill web fora.  That's not going to happen, for a variety of reasons,
but Mailman 3 will put lists on a much more even footing with the web
fora.