Re: [exim] Out of Office and collateral spam

I *don't* infer anything from the lack of a response except that I
didn't get a response.

I do, however, get useful information from a well-behaved OoO message.

And the fact is: while I may know technically that e-mail won't
necessarily be delivered immediately (or at all), we all _do_ depend
on it. Increasingly, e-mail is the only information we share with
strangers. Few Media Relations pages list phone numbers for the PR
representatives. Unless I already have a relationship with the
company, I'm unlikely to know their direct line.

And while my example was PR related, it's easily generalizable.
Yesterday, I sent an e-mail message to someone who'd expressed
interest in writing an article for me. I didn't get a response, even
though I said, "The deadline would be the 21st -- can you do it?" I
don't have a phone number for the guy; all I have is the e-mail.
Maybe he's out of the office, maybe he's slow to respond, maybe he's
not interested. How the heck can I know? Meanwhile, I've scratched
his article from the package; Ruby fans will hate me.

Esther

On Jan 8, 2008, at 2:15 AM, Jethro R Binks wrote:

> On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, WJCarpenter wrote:
>
>>> Summary: you cannot infer anything useful from a lack of response,
>>> other than the fact that you haven't received a response.
>>
>> Yeah, but .... we're not talking about the lack of a response. We're
>> talking about an out of office message or similar. You don't have to
>> infer anything from that ... it comes right out an tells you.
>
> Esther was talking about what she infers from getting neither an
> OoO, nor
> a prompt response to her message,