Spam from gmail

[Ben Finney]

Steven D'Aprano <steven at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au> writes:

> On Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:39:08 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
>
> > Spam is better defined as unsolicited bulk messaging. Whether it's
> > commercial in nature is irrelevant. The content is relevant only in
> > that it's unsolicited by the vast majority of its many recipients.
>
> Not quite.
>
> I've read tens of thousands of messages to comp.lang.python, and
> solicited perhaps some hundreds. Are all the rest spam? I should say
> not! I haven't solicited them: at no point did I say, explicitly or
> implicitly, "Hey strangers all over the world, send me messages asking
> questions about Python"

By subscribing to the forum, I maintain that you do exactly that.

> but I do welcome them.

Whether they're welcome or not, they're solicited in the sense of being
delivered to the recipient who explicitly asked to receive messages on a
particular range of topics.

When a message that is well outside the nominal range of topics for a
forum is broadcast to recipients by means of that forum, the message is
unsolicited.

-- 
 \         “All my life I've had one dream: to achieve my many goals.” |
  `\                                            —Homer, _The Simpsons_ |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney