Brian Behlendorf wrote,
| Adding text to the message to the recipient is probably overkill
| so long as the AOL user gets the warning.
It would be overkill if the AOL user always noticed, read, understood, and
considered the warning. But remember, we're discussing people who are per-
forming the cloudy-minded act of requesting mail -- whether it is a list sub-
scription or just an answer to the current letter -- from someone they've
blocked. (If the AOL user sends something that does not request a response
even implicitly, then the insertion I suggested is unnecessary, but how can
AOL's software tell?) Can we really bet on unfailing attention to the warn-
ing, comprehension of it, and sensible decisions about it from everyone who
gets into the position where it's on his or her screen in the first place?
Obviously, I think it will work a lot of the time, or I wouldn't have agreed
with Bob Brown about it (I proposed it myself last summer), but I feel that
the proportion of times that it will just wash over the sender's head or that
the sender will knowingly defy it (either out of actual desire for no reply
attempt or out of malice) justify a short caution to the recipient.
A blurb in the text at least helps the recipient make an informed choice. He
or she can then decide among trying to write anyway, reaching the sender some
other way, or not responding at all. Every time you don't send mail that
will end up bouncing, you save the resources to deliver it plus those to de-
liver the NDN back to you, not to mention your own effort to compose and dis-
patch it.
PS: I never want to type, much less say, "unidirectionality" again and deeply
hope that there is no such word.
References:
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