[epub] Re: what's the policy?

[Tim.Sherrill@xxxxxxxxxx]

There are two sides to the issues of autoresponders and challenge/response
systems.  Both are solutions by a segment of your readership.

The thing to realize here is that both solutions work fine in a balanced
environment if the number of emails you receive is on-par with the number of
emails you receive.  If you compose 20 messages a day and receive 30, if
three of those require to you to follow a link or mention that someone you
emailed is on vacation, this isn't an issue.  These two 'solutions' become
an issue when you are in an asymmetric environment such as a newsletter.

Everyone's frustrated by SPAM, but everyone should be careful about someone
else's approach to solving the problem of SPAM.  Creative, diverse solutions
are more likely to yield something helpful in the long run, even if it does
create legitimate problems for useful mail now.  From the customer's
perspective is it so unreasonable for you to require email verification for
your membership but then refuse to verify your identity to the customer?

I'm not picking on anyone on the list--the gist of this conversation is that
SPAM has ruined a good thing for those running email lists which is hard to
dispute.

Tim

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Myers [mailto:paul@xxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 08, 2004 3:20 PM
To: Epub Discussion Group
Subject: [epub] Re: what's the policy?

> The point is that, if people subscribe for work reasons and
> FROM work, they're typically on a corporate network with
> only one email address allowed, not a hosting account with
> options for more.

Then they need to either get additional addresses, or stop the 
challenge/response and autoresponder stuff.