On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 10:08:33AM +0000, Philip Hazel wrote:
> 1. Originally, the name "Exim" did not appear in the body. People
> misunderstood the message and thought it came from a human, or from a
> MUA. I was asked to make it clear which piece of software was
> generating the message, so I added "(Exim)".
>
> I think it's becoming clear that the changes have had negative effects,
> and perhaps I should go back to the original wording, which did not
> mention Exim, nor anything about the server.
>
> What do people think?
My opinion, which comes from the context of an ISP offering service to
thousands of computer illiterates, is that the average person has
never heard of Exim. To them, it's more likely an abbreviation for
Export/Import than it is mail software.
Technical people will read the headers, but the average citizen will
only be reading the words they understand, which is this first sentence
you are referring to.
We've found through trial and error over many years that the wording
"This is a courtesy notice..." at the beginning tends to make people
understand that it is not something they need to reply to, as in:
"This is a courtesy notice informing you that the email that you
attempted to send was unable to be sent to its recipient."
If someone technical wants to know the type of mail software, seems to
me that they would only read the error message itself and then would
immediately scan to the received headers to determine the origin of
the message itself. Knowing the name of the mail software seems
hardly all that useful, especially in the greeting portion.
--
Dean Brooks
dean@???
