terminology update

Discussion of items in the "What's New" log.

terminology update

Postby josh » Sat Apr 22, 2017 4:01 am

I just did a vanity web search and found where someone was petitioning a disposable email domain list service (used by others to block sign-ups with email addresses from the listed domains) to remove the spamgourmet domains -- the list maintainers refused, but wow the guy (or gal) fought hard - I was impressed. (I was also depressed that Larry Seltzer's 2002 review that got so much wrong about our service is still haunting us 15 years later - one such falsehood was quoted [and even still misunderstood] by the list maintainer as a reason for keeping us on the list. Jeez Larry!)

Anyway, haters gonna hate - I doubt our proponent could have said anything to convince these folks to take us off the list, but according to the list maintainers, it was completely dispositive that we styled ourselves as a 'disposable email' service.

That took me by surprise - I guess I was using that term before it was uncool. I'm sure I wasn't the first one to think of the term, but when I did, I thought I might be, because I didn't hear it anywhere else. And it seemed pretty cool to me in 2000.

(As many of you know, we were not the first of these services, as I came to find out soon enough. I also learned that people had been using the term 'disposable email' to refer to services like hotmail and yahoo for some time before I thought of it)

For a long time, my benchmark on how well the site was doing was to search google for 'disposable email' and see how far up the list it was. For years, we held the number one spot! Then a bunch of other services came around, and grabbed the superior positions. I tried to SEO-ize the site for a little while, but gave up on that pretty quickly, and it fell further and further down the page, and onto the second, etc. I cared less and less - but still held a special regard for the term 'disposable email'

But reading that dialog, I could see how the term has taken on a negative connotation. Our proponent argued strenuously that we didn't fit a multi-point definition of a 'disposable email' service - the points were all sort-of-bad things, and things we designed out of our service to keep it from being abused from the very beginning. But in the end, the list maintainer shut down the conversation, because, after all, we proudly called ourself one right at the very top of the page.

To be clear, I'm completely unfazed that the list maintainers were disparagingly calling us a 'disposable email' service. Rather I was struck by how our defender was arguing so forcefully that we weren't one.

So - I'm cured - I spent a few minutes removing that distasteful term from the website, and now our addresses are called what most of you have been calling them all along: 'spamgourmet addresses', or, with only slightly more usefulness, 'auto-creating addresses'

(I'm not in love with it, btw, but I'm also not interested in trying to create a new categorical term, not after that :) )
josh
 
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Re: terminology update

Postby Josh Parris » Fri Apr 28, 2017 5:49 am

josh wrote:now our addresses are called what most of you have been calling them all along: 'spamgourmet addresses', or, with only slightly more usefulness, 'auto-creating addresses'

(I'm not in love with it, btw, but I'm also not interested in trying to create a new categorical term, not after that :) )

I consider it an email redirection service. An individualized redirection service.

Everyone is given a spamgourmet email address, everyone. My Dad. People at work. Randoms. I just don't know when someone who would never want to spam me is going to get a virus or something and have their Outlook address book stolen. All I have to do to deal with that is say "Dad, stop using dad4.example@spamgourmet.com; use dad5.example@spamgourmet.com instead. And get some anti-virus software!"

But that spamgourmet is making it onto lists of email-addresses-not-to-accept is why I wanted to set up my own server; I've had several experiences of using a sg address and having it knocked back for no disclosed reason (last time it was "server error" with The Guardian). Some semi-automatic way of adding domains would be a way around the bad lists - have domains few know of.
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Re: terminology update

Postby MFPA » Mon Apr 02, 2018 11:57 am

Hi Josh. I just noticed that <https://sourceforge.net/projects/spamgourmet/> still begins its description with "A forwarding disposable address system."
MFPA
 
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Re: terminology update

Postby josh » Fri Apr 13, 2018 1:37 pm

fixed it - thanks!
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Re: terminology update

Postby lwc » Sat Apr 14, 2018 7:24 am

What about the "Includes a captcha" line? I don't recall ever seeing one.
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