[Mailman-Users] what constitutes spam?

[Richard Damon]

On 5/18/12 6:14 PM, Anne Wainwright wrote:
> Hi,
>
> For the record the following URL is of interest
>
> http://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/
>
> This clearly makes the point that spam is defined by two factors
>
> "A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk"
>
> and being who they are their definition must carry some weight. In terms
> of their definition my mailing was not spam. Still, and I think Stephen
> made the point, there is also the consideration of good business
> practice to be considered.
>
> over & out for tonight.
>
> Anne
>
I will point out that from the recipients point of view, a mailman
invite looks to be "Bulk", they have no way to know if you sent it
specifically to them or to a large list.

A place like spamhaus can use "bulk" as part of their criteria, and see
if essentially the same message is sent out repeatedly, an individual
recipient generally can not, so their version of the "bulk" criteria is
does it look like a mass mailing.

One way around this is rather than us the mailman invite feature, write
a personal email where you "invite" the person to subscribe, giving the
url of the subscription page as a pointer. While you can't prevent
someone from pressing the "This is spam" button, if you have done some
pre-vetting to be sure the person is likely interested, and made the
message clearly personal and not bulk, will minimize the chances of them
doing so. 

-- 
Richard Damon