New Obscure Infraction: Marking PAFOA email as spam

[Gun]

There are currently a few ways that you can receive email from PAFOA, here they are and how to disable them:

1. Our mailing list: Visit your User CP and uncheck "Receive Email from Administrators"
2. Email from other members: Visit your User CP and uncheck "Receive Email from Other Members"
3. New Private Message Notifications: Visit your User CP and uncheck "Receive Email Notification of New Private Messages"
4. Thread Subscription Notifications: Visit your Thread Subscription Management and delete subscriptions you no longer wish to receive.

Mark (Viper), read what I quoted from Dan's post. Easy resolution, and not being jerk-ish.

[Philbert]

It is entirely inappropriate for the moderators of a website to tell it's users what to do with their email. It's not your place to deem what someone does on their computer as "acceptable." If your new provider has policies that are too strict, switch to a different provider.

Threatening people with infractions for making certain decisions on what to do with their email is wrong. Making a very public statement, perhaps using that nice big banner at the top of the forum, explaining why such actions from users can adversely affect the website, is a much better (and less iron fisted) way to go about it. Not to mention, less jerk-ish.

People can do what they want with their own email, up to and including sending all PAFOA mail to the bin. But when they report spam, they are falsely telling their ISP that PAFOA is illegitimately (and possibly criminally) sending email. That results in all kinds of undeserved hassle for PAFOA. As someone who is often on the receiving end of bad faith reports to the authorities, I would have thought you'd be more sympathetic.

[ViperGTS19801]

Gun and Philbert,

I am entirely sympathetic to the concept and I totally understand where PAFOA Administration is coming from, but to simply make the jump to issuing infractions, rather than being more amicable and asking for members to follow those steps, is extremely heavy-handed, and, frankly, outright rude. If the admins of the forums can pinpoint who is submitting the spam reports, they can also send a PM asking that user to re-evaluate their forum subscription and email settings.

I don't have a problem with asking folks not to mark emails as spam, and I find the steps outlined to be very helpful and straightforward. But to make the leap to "we're going to punish you for doing X" instead of trying "please don't do X because it's a pain in the ass for us" is a very far, unnecessary, and inconsiderate leap.

[FNG19]

But to make the leap to "we're going to punish you for doing X" instead of trying "please don't do X because it's a pain in the ass for us" is a very far, unnecessary, and inconsiderate leap.

I don't know about that. There's something about setting the ground rules and expectations up front to avoid problems later that seems to work for most people. I imagine Dan doesn't have a lot of rope here. If people reporting legitimate emails as spam is going to cause major problems for him/PAFOA, then he has every right -- and, in fact, has an obligation -- to internalize those externalities, as an economist might say.

[ViperGTS19801]

I've have had my settings to never notify me of anything except private messages since the day I signed up, so it doesn't affect me. I just find the message this sends to be over the top.

[PennsyPlinker]

I've have had my settings to never notify me of anything except private messages since the day I signed up, so it doesn't affect me. I just find the message this sends to be over the top.

Things change. This is one of them. I did not have any input into this, but it is no different than any of the other rules for posting:

No personal attacks
No spam
No porn
Etc

Now there is:

No marking email you have elected to receive as spam. Most of them do not give you that option.

While the consequences are severe, it is one infraction that is easily reversed by a response from the one who receives the infraction.

[ViperGTS19801]

What is the current default setting for the email options when new users sign up? To the best of my recollection, they are all defaulted to on. If this is the case, has any consideration been given to setting those defaults to off, except for PMs and Admin emails?

[mauser]

I would like to add that if you are using AOL for your email you are doing a disservice to yourself and to this forum. Much/most email to an AOL address gets flagged as SPAM.

In my opinion, if you aren't using Thunderbird for your email you are doing yourself a great disservice. It's a quick download, easy to install and so easy to configure that even my dad can do it.
There's no reason to put up with automatic spam filters, I'll decide what's spam and what's not, I don't need a third party trying to read my mind.
I get all emails from PAFOA as far as updates, PMs and email from staff and other members, it only takes a few seconds to look and click the red X to get rid of the ones I don't want.
Shit I get from politicians and advertisement companies can easily be marked as spam and I'll not get any more, I'm in control with Thunderbird.
Try it and eliminate headaches..

https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/thunderbird/

[FNG19]

What is the current default setting for the email options when new users sign up?

+1 on this. It'd help significantly going forward. Hell, I'd go further and shut off everyone's notifications, make the announcement, and let them turn them back on if they want them.

There's no reason to put up with automatic spam filters, I'll decide what's spam and what's not, I don't need a third party trying to read my mind.

I dunno, man. I don't use thunderbird. I use Apple Mail, or mutt via ssh, or webmail, depending on where I am and what the network situation is like. I also use one of those automatic spam filters that does a damn good job. It scores the mail based on some fairly complicated criteria, then I have other filters that decide what to do with it based on the scores that are assigned. And, all this happens before my client ever touches it.

Poorly implemented tools suck. Poorly designed tools suck. Excessive reliance on automation for qualitative decisions sucks.

Automatic spam filters? They're not bad.

[mauser]

Poorly implemented tools suck. Poorly designed tools suck. Excessive reliance on automation for qualitative decisions sucks.

Automatic spam filters? They're not bad.

To each his own but in my opinion automatic spam filters fall into the realm of what you say suck.

That's MY opinion, yours will vary but I know what I want and I don't trust anyone else or their software to make that sort of decision for me.

I KNOW I missed some email communications that I didn't want to miss before I found out about Thunderbird.