In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Ben Bucksch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'd like to discuss return reciepts in general....
>
> J.B. Moreno wrote:
>
> > Return Receipts in email are a bit problematic, some people don't like
> > it because "recieving" and "reading" aren't the same thing...
>
> While I do see the privacy problems with Return Reciepts, I also know
> that I am always uncertain, if a mail arrived, if I don't get a
> response. I never know, if I were intentionally ignored, if the
> recipient didn't have time to read it, or if he never recieved it. The 3
> cases require different behaviour on my side, and I can only guess,
> what's the case. I would really like to have some confirmation that the
> transfer worked OK.
>
> Any opinions? Is that a case, where email could be improved technically,
> or are that more social problems that I have to live with?
It's a social problem, because the real question isn't "did my mail
safely arrive on the recipients computer", it's "did the recipient
/read/ my mail". A partial technical solution to this question is
possible, but requires a social change and won't be 100% accurate for
two reasons (human error, older systems).
BTW -- for anyone that wants to dispute the above, do you not care that
your message arrived and was then erased due to a computer
crash/virus/human error before it's viewed by human eyes or are you
just satisfied knowing that it got past their modem?
And for the technical problem of knowing that it has arrived -- until
spam is gone it's going to remain on the sidelines due to fears that it
is being used to verify addresses. And even after that is gone there
will remain a social problem -- the obligation or lack thereof to
respond. Some people think that you should reply to them as soon as
you have read their message, other people feel they should reply (if at
all) in their own good time, return receipts become objects of dissent
between these two camps.
--
J.B. Moreno
