On Nov 21, Dean Brooks wrote:
> 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."
It seems to work both ways though in my experience. The more polite and
chatty you are, the more people are likely to think there's a human at
the other end. qmail's "Hi, this is qmail-send...blah...sorry it didn't
work out" message seems to generate an awful lot of user replies.
Maybe a happy medium's needed (if one exists at all, I'm doubtful) -
polite and clear, but obviously from a computer which won't necessarily
listen to you. :-)
- Mark
--
| Mark Hynes mark.hynes@??? |
| Systems Developer http://www.uk.easynet.net/ |
| Easynet Ltd -- a part of Easynet Group plc |
