[Mailman-Users] what constitutes spam?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Anne Wainwright writes:

 > I have sinned and stand repentant. I hate spam as much as anyone and we
 > get plenty to deal with. Somehow the Viagra and get rich emails didn't
 > seem to stand on the same level as a once-off invite.

They don't, from the point of view of the sender or society at large.
But for the recipient....

 > As an aside, I have to ask whether the 'invite' feature in Mailman has a
 > function.

Sure.  As Mark points out, it confirms the intention of the user to
join, which gives you the "double opt-in" property that gives a
conservative litmus test for "not spam".

I think it might be a useful question to ask, "how can the invite
feature be made more functional?"

In particular, if you've written a careful email, answering an
inquiry, I see nothing spammy about adding a Mailman invite to that
... if it were possible, which currently it isn't, from any mail
client I know of.  OTOH, you could write that email using Mailman's
"invite" interface, but I bet you'd get tired of that real quick.