[plug] re: Email rules

[Gavin Chester]

On Wed, 2008-02-20 at 12:00 +0900, Bret Busby wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Feb 2008, Gavin Chester wrote:

-snip-
> > So are you saying that when I send emails to a group of recipients in
> > the way I described before (ie, from me to me, with them in the BCC)
> > that you and others will treat that as spam? Why? I thought it good
> > netiquette to do it that way and what harm could it possibly do the
> > recipient since I'm not obscuring my address? 

> I think that it is bad "netiquette" to send emails that ahow a To 
> address that is the same as the From address.
> About 95-99% of that type of email that I receive, are malicious.
> 
> However, unfortunately, the secretary of one organisation of which I am 
> a member, uses that method for distributing email messages.
> 
> I believe and suggest that a far more responsible method, would be to 
> use a mailing list; either an announce only mailing list, or a mailing 
> list to which subscribers may post. It is easy enough to require manual 
> approval of subscriptions.
> 
> Using a mailing list, gives a To address that is different to the From 
> address, and filtering on mailing list header fields

Okay - hoping to learn here, so please indulge me further :-) What
really gives me the sh at ts is email newbs who send to a group in an
organisation or association (let's say 12-50 recipients) and the email
client displays all addresses in the "to" box that ends up taking up a
whole damn screen! :-( So, that's where "undisclosed" recipients in the
BCC protects privacy and saves eye strain. Your suggestion of mail lists
is obviously the best, but well beyond most people guilty of this email
bad-practice.

What is a compromise to satisfy netiquette and spam filters? Would one
user with two valid email addresses suffice (from and to, with everyone
else in BCC)? Please, I do this from time to time and don't want my
missives to be labelled spam :-)

Gavin