🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec28.171751.25819@chance.gts.org> john@chance.gts.org (John R MacMillan) writes:
> I apologize for the length, but this is something I feel fairly
> strongly about.  Sprinkle liberally with IMHOs.

Here Here!  Thanks John!

> My position on this is that receipts are only genuinely useful if they
> are guaranteed.  Since we can't get this with the loose email net we
> have, it's not useful.

I'll go even further:  they are "dangerous" in the sense that they
provide incomplete information a false sense of security.  As John
said later in his article -- "User expectation is perhaps the biggest
problem."  User's I know who say they like this feature are
*completely* mislead by it.

I'll re-iterate too that even if you get a response, then there's no
guarantee the remote reader will be able to respond, since there's no
way to track between the MTA which thinks it performed final delivery,
and the MUA.

Yes, a "Read-receipt-to:", implemented in the MUA, might be OK, but
does assume some degree of user intervention, but then with the
proliferation of things like vacation, this point is rather
out-weighed.  I think the user demand has been driven by several
things:  1) the historical lack of reliable e-mail; 2) the never
ending drive to keep track of one's fellow man; 3) historical
frustration with non-electronic mail.

If you want to get a message through to someone, the only sure way to
receive confirmation is out-of-band from the original delivery channel.

Then there's the mailing list problem.....

How about updating the mail standards to say that such features are
not permitted!  :-)
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@robohack.UUCP, woods@Elegant.COM  VE3TCP	UniForum Canada & ECI
+1 416 443-1734 [home] +1 416 362-XRSA [work]	Toronto, Ontario; CANADA