[Mailman-Users] The AOL Problem

[Chuq Von Rospach]

On Apr 3, 2004, at 11:26 AM, Bob Bowers wrote:

> On Tuesday I was informed by my web hosting service that they had 
> multiple spam complaints from AOL for one of my mail lists.


welcome to the monkey farm:

http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/000256.html

http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/000360.html

http://www.plaidworks.com/chuqui/blog/000200.html

and there's more in my blog.

basically, you depend on your users being intelligent. AOL assumes they 
are, plust that they never make mistakes. Neither is always true.

you have two choices: ignore AOL, which, actually, you can, lathough 
explaining that to your ISP will be amusing. second, turn on 
personalization, add the user's email address to the footer, where AOL 
inexplicably doesn't cloak it, and unsubscribe anyone stupid enough to 
file a spam complaint agianst your mail list. My policy is simple: do 
it once, you get unsubscribed; do it twice, you get banned. they learn 
fast once their actions in reporting spam ahve consequences. 
unfortunately, AOL doesn't reuqire anything of the but pushing buttons, 
and doesn't punish users who report stuff incorrectly -- so they don't 
have to learn unless you force them to.