"You're trying to fit reputation policy -- which is a sociopolitical issue -- into a technical standard. A peg of infinite dimensions into a hole of intentionally finite dimensions. The likelihood that it'll fit is infinitely small."

I've said similar things many times in the past, but never this well.

This is one of Doug Otis's favorite rants, but I'll try to explain it in fewer than 54 paragraphs. *grin*

Today, all of our spam / not spam decisions are based on one or more of the following criteria:

• source IP address
• guesswork
• content comparison

Most of the time, any decisions made about the trustworthiness of the source IP address are based on guesswork too, but there just simply isn't anything else we can rely on about a message.

Politically and technically accurate (or close enough for a wide audience) -- very nice change after the rash of lame articles we've seen recently.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2005/07/14/microsoft-yahoo-spam-cx_fr_0714spam.html?partner=rss