Re: Thinking outside the box

On Mar 17, 2013, at 7:59 AM, Richi Jennings <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Jose-Marcio Martins
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> As long as we're interested on the spam problem, there are two things to be
>> clearly defined.
> 
> IME, anti-spam researchers usually answer that pair of questions like this:
> 
> 1. It's not about content, it's about consent.
> 
> 2. Spam is UBE -- unsolicited bulk email.
> - Unsolicited means lacking informed consent.
> - Bulk means automatically-generated (and does not imply large
> volumes). Compare with other definitions, notably UCE (the C being
> Commercial).
> - Email... I'll leave that to your imagination.

In the real world we tend not to use the term "spam" or "UBE"
or any related definitions and focus on the recipient experience. Categories
like "email users didn't want to receive" and "email users didn't expect to
receive" are self-explanatory, clear, operationally useful and avoid weekly
hundred post threads where people explain carefully what their definition
of spam is.

Cheers,
  Steve