[thelist] The Tao of asking questions on thelist (was Protecting against ...

Peter-Paul Koch gassinaumasis at hotmail.com
Tue Nov 20 06:19:26 CST 2001


>Long messages (like this one) are simply less likely to get read, or if 
>they
>are they will be skimmed.  So the thing is to cut out everything that is 
>not
>essential to the question and if the explanation of the problem is
>moderately long, repeat and flag your question clearly, e.g.:
>
>Q. What is the answer to this question?
>
>Over-simplification is not so bad as over-elaboration - the worst that can
>happen is that people will respond with answers that don't exactly fit your
>problem or they will ask you for more info... either way, you've got that
>extended helping hand and you can then explain your problem in more detail
>to them (off-list if necessary).

I couldn't agree more. The only time I reject a post as being too short is 
when the writer doesn't mention vital information, like the browser he has 
problems with or a URL (in case of a complicated question). Sometimes I ask 
for more info, more often I delete the posting.

Also, what is *very* important is a good title for the message. I get about 
400 mails per day from about 10 to 15 mailing lists (can't remember exactly 
how many) and I routinely delete about 75 to 90% of them unread. 'Please 
help', 'I don't know', 'Question' => trash bin.

>But having said all that, I could see nothing wrong with the aforementioned
>unanswered post... so I guess shit just happens sometimes.

The problem, I think, is that there is no answer to this question (see 
below).  Even the best written mail fails if no one knows.

> > My client is receiving irate replies from victims of a spammer
> > who is using randomly-generated mailbox names under her domain.
> >
> > We all know you can type whatever REPLY-TO address you want to
> > into just about any client or webmail app... and also that
> > end-users are uninterested in looking at mail headers to
> > fingerprint the actual source of an email.
> >
> > The message content included a clickthrough to <badurl here>
> > which was there last week and gone now (no surprise there.)
> >
> > Question:
> >
> > 1) Is there *any* recourse whatsoever for this kind of thing?

Unfortunately, no (as far as I know). If her mail server is abused for 
sending spam it can be helped, but not if her domain is being used. The 
spammer just fills in an email address in his spam, and you can't prevent 
that.

The best thing she can do is create a standard reply that explains she can't 
help it and advises people to subscribe to http://spamcop.net and complain 
about spam through this service.

ppk

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp





More information about the thelist mailing list