[Dovecot] help a journalist: What do you wish the CIO understood about fighting spam?

[Stewart Dean]

I sent Esther this about the need for feedback in mail software and 
standards.

> I'll pass this on to more appropriate people but would like to bend 
> your ear on a marginally related riff of my own.
>
> The problem is NO FEEDBACK
>
> People (understandably) want to use email without understanding it, 
> its mechanism, its realities.  Unfortunately, this puts the IT 
> department in a world like that of the early 1900's when a world of 
> horse riders was trying to use cars in the way they used horses.  The 
> result is users who regard email as a sort of problematic tool that 
> might as well be magic.  Not understanding it, they bang on it and 
> misuse it in the most preposterous ways, like:
> = having a 500MB inbox under IMAP which they don't understand is a 
> single file...and wonder why it takes so long to open.  The idea of 
> never taking out the garbage would never happen at home, but it 
> happens in their inbox
> = attaching a 200 MB file to a mail message, and a) not knowing that 
> it was 200 MB or even knowing what 200MB means, b) wondering why it 
> doesn't go through and c) repeatedly resending it and d) getting 
> furious at IT that the goddamn magic isn't working
> = attaching a 1 MB file to a mail sent to all 3000 accounts in a small 
> liberal arts college, which has an effect somewhat like the Titanic 
> hitting the iceberg.  And the 1MB attach was a scanned copy of a faxed 
> cellular phone service offer...scanned in 24bit color complete with 
> every flyspeck.
>
> The problem is feedback, it's lack.  The mail software, indeed the 
> Intenet mail standards, such as IMAP and POP and,almost all software, 
> have no provision for informing the user when they are doing something 
> very demanding (or stupid or abusive).
> When software and standards are written, they should include feedback 
> mechanisms that inform and direct the users to appropriate use.
>
> Our bodies (except for a very few and endangered individuals) has a 
> pain mechanism to give us feedback.  Software and standards need this 
> too.



-- 
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Stewart Dean, Unix System Admin, Henderson Computer Resources 
Center of Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York  12504  
sdean at bard.edu  voice: 845-758-7475, fax: 845-758-7035