On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 09:06 -0700, Esther Schindler wrote:
First: I'd asked for input for this article on the dovecot list. I
received several replies from people who answered my question, "what
ONE thing do you wish your CIO understood about this subject?" So, at
a minimum, my message was written to let people know that the project
was complete and that their contributions mattered. (Not to mention
that a few of your online friends might have been quoted.) This is
called "good manners."
Posting on topic messages to mailing lists is also called good manners. This is a technical mailing list strictly focused on dovecot. Dovecot has nothing to do with spam. I'm sure you already know spam is not the same to everybody. Such a message on the dovecot mailing list is spam for me.
http://www.dovecot.org/mailinglists.html
Also, I don't see that the article was irrelevant. It was meant, from
the first, to be a document that explained the techie's side of the
issue to a manager. If your CIO doesn't need to be told these things,
then I'm very happy for you -- but I've already gotten several
responses saying that a copy was sent to the boss' office. For many
readers, having the boss understand the situation _does_ help an
email admin deal with the problem (i.e. the problem of clueless
management), so I think it's relevant indeed.
I don't think CIOs read this list or, if they do, expect to be informed about spam from this list. I'm not questioning the actual contents of your article.
Third, I'm rather irritated when I see people use the word "spam" to
mean "I'm not interested in this." You could argue that my message
was off-topic. (I would disagree, but I'd accept the viewpoint.)
However, spam is defined as unsolicited commercial e-mail. A link to
an online article is not commercial, especially if there's nothing at
that site for you to buy.
People subscribed to this list are interested in dovecot related topics. I'm really interested in understanding how your message may be considered on topic here. Your message is mostly advertising your article, on a topic not relevant to the list. If you wanted to inform peers about your project status you could have at least tagged your message OT or even better sent a message directly to them.
Honestly I'm rather irritated by your attitude.