At 05:26 PM 10/1/97 -0700, David Lundell wrote:
>First and foremost, do you feel, from an ethical standpoint, that
>mailing list administrators should always verify a user before
>subscribing that user?
Do you mean manually, or via automated mechanisms in the MLM software? I
find that the automated verification mechanism in Majordomo (for example)
handles that very well. After suffering numerous prank s*bscriptions
earlier this year, they almost dropped to zero after enabling verification.
I say "almost", because I've had a few cases where the prankster obtained
a NetAddress account, s*bscribed to lists, and then set the account to
forward to the victim. Of course, verification won't prevent that.
>Lastly, if any of you have switched from no verification at all to some
>type of verification, did you notice a slow-down in the growth of your
>lists?
I don't have any hard numbers to back it up (though I could produce them,
if anyone's really interested), but I'd say there's been a very slight
slow-down on my lists. I attribute that to the slight difficulty (if you
can call it that) of processing the verifications, as it prevents
s*bscriptions from those who are completely unable to follow written
directions. I do not consider that to be a bad thing, because it helps
keep those who are unable to manage their email from repeatedly
demonstrating that fact in front of thousands of other people.
Dave Voorhis
mailto:dave@armchair.mb.ca
http://www.armchair.mb.ca/~dave
References:
|
|
