[Mailman-Users] Digest option for Yahoo and AOL subscribers?

[Richard Damon]

On 5/25/14, 11:30 AM, Mark Rousell wrote:
> (Not sent to list previously, apologies).
>
> On 25/05/2014 01:00, Richard Damon wrote:
>> The "problem" isn't DMARC, the problem is it's abuse by Yahoo and AOL.
>> These are big players, and it isn't really practical for lists to just
>> say they are breaking the rules so we won't let them play anymore. (If
>> only for the old days of usenet where abusive servers were given the
>> "death penalty" and they lost their connectivity for a while).
> I t think your comments are compatible with DMARC being the
> "interloper", as Stephen put it. DMARC (whether in general or in terms
> of Yahoo's and AOL's use/misuse/abuse of it) is the interloper (i.e.
> newcomer) that is in practice impacting pre-existing and legitimate
> usage patterns.
>
> I agree that the idea behind DMARC is a good one the reality is less good.
>
> Whilst Yahoo and AOL are the ones who have chosen to use/misuse/abuse
> DMARC in this way, it could also be said that DMARC (and all its backers
> on its current form) are to blame precisely because DMARC *allows*
> Yahoo's/AOL's behaviour. If the standard has been properly finished and
> properly thought through from all angles then ways could surely have
> been found to allow it to be used without harming existing,
> standards-compliant behaviour. The consortium behind DMARC simply
> weren't willing to wait or play along. It seems that some of them were
> particularly desperate and were willing to harm interoperability.
>
My understanding is that DMARC WAS going through the standardization
process, and actually was to the state where experimental use was
justified (and in some sense actually required). The problem that
happened is that Yahoo jumped into the limited clinical trial and
experimented with millions before we had a chance to find out the side
effects of the medicine.

I suppose that the communities response should have been to just kick
off all Yahoo (and later AOL) users from mailing list (as that is really
one meaning of the DMARC setting announced), but the community had too
much compassion for the "innocent" users (since the real problem was
with Yahoo "management" not it's users). Perhaps if we had been
hard-lined, they would get enough complaints and people leaving to force
them to change their mind, but I more expect we would have punished a
lot of innocent users who really don't want to go through the hassle of
changing email providers, and are more apt to just drop off mailing lists. 

-- 
Richard Damon