[Spambayes] RE: Off the List Please

[Coe, Bob]

In my environment (Outlook 2000 and Exchange Server) HTML messages from the list have the footer as a plaintext attachment. But in any case, the reference in the footer is only an unexplained link. I doubt that an unsophisticated user will realize that that's where the unsubscribe information is.

Bob


> -----Original Message-----
> From: spambayes-bounces+rcoe=cambridgema.gov at python.org
> [mailto:spambayes-bounces+rcoe=cambridgema.gov at python.org]On Behalf Of
> Tim Peters
> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 4:33 PM
> To: skip at pobox.com
> Cc: spambayes at python.org
> Subject: Re: [Spambayes] Off the List Please
> 
> 
> [Skip Montanaro]
> > (Should I try channelling Tim?  Sounds dangerous...)
> 
> I predict you'll survive <wink>.
> 
> > Tim uses Outlook.
> ...
> > While I'm sure he knows Mailman's behavior well enough to not need
> > to see header fields or the footer to know what they contain, I
> > suppose he may also know how to drive Outlook well enough to
> > expose those bits.
> 
> I actually don't know.  I read my spambayes subscription via a gmail
> account these days, and the list info is definitely visible at the
> bottom of HTML msgs from the spambayes list viewed via gmail.  gmail
> does with it what it's supposed to do with it.
> 
> All versions of Outlook (but not of Outlook Express) destroy incoming
> MIME structure in a non-reversible way, and it could very well be that
> they simply throw away the list info Mailman is trying to display when
> they receive an HTML msg.  The info is still in the headers then (most
> easily revealed by doing a "show clues" via SpamBayes), but Outlook
> does make those clumsy to get at.
> 
> So, for all I know, it's true that no Outlook user ever sees the list
> info on HTML msgs.  There would be little Mailman-community knowledge
> about this, because by default Mailman throws away all text/html MIME
> sections, reflecting (I guess) geeks' widespread hatred of HTML email;
> the spambayes lists are rare exceptions.
> 
> But Outlook certainly *does* show the list info on plain-text msgs
> sent to the list; I have thousands of those archived in my Outlook,
> and you don't have to do anything special to see it.  Despite that we
> allow it here, relatively little traffic to this list is in HTML
> format, so "even Outlook users" <wink> don't have much excuse.
> 
> Anyway, it's not something I want to spend more time on.  The admin
> pages make clear that an overwhelmingly majority of folks who want to
> unsubscribe manage to do so on their own.
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