Spam from gmail

[Steve Holden]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:39:08 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> 
>> Spam is better defined as unsolicited bulk messaging. Whether it's
>> commercial in nature is irrelevant. The content is relevant only in that
>> it's unsolicited by the vast majority of its many recipients.
> 
> Not quite.
> 
> I've read tens of thousands of messages to comp.lang.python, and 
> solicited perhaps some hundreds. Are all the rest spam? I should say not!
> I haven't solicited them: at no point did I say, explicitly or 
> implicitly, "Hey strangers all over the world, send me messages asking 
> questions about Python" but I do welcome them.
> 
> (In fact, I'd be annoyed if everyone started sending the questions to me 
> personally instead of to the list.)
> 
> I think it is foolish to try to create a water-tight definition of 
> "spam". It is clearly a fuzzy concept, which means sometimes right-
> thinking people can have legitimate disagreements as to whether or not 
> something is "spam".
> 
> For example, I happen to think that the OP's message about Fascism is off-
> topic but not spam. I think Joan is guilty of a breach of etiquette for 
> failing to label it [OT] in the subject line, and she should have 
> directed replies to a more appropriate forum (a mailing list, another 
> newsgroup, a web forum, anywhere but here). But in my opinion, it didn't 
> cross the line into spam. I wouldn't be the slightest bit tempted to 
> killfile her, or flag the message as spam, in my mail/news client.
> 
> If other people feel differently, well, that's your personal choice. But 
> please don't try to tell me that *my* line between spam and ham is wrong, 
> and that *yours* is the only correct one. 
> 
> (That last response is aimed at a generic You, not Ben specifically. 
> Stupid English language, why can't we have a word for generic you?)
> 
> 
That's why SpamBayes allows per-user training.

regards
 Steve
-- 
Steve Holden           +1 571 484 6266   +1 800 494 3119
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