On Wed, 2 Jun 2021 10:50:05 +0100, Laura Atkins via mailop <mailop@mailop.org>
wrote:
>I think the system has accreted and evolved to a point where not even the
>folks inside Microsoft can tell you why a mail was delivered where it was. I
>mean, thats been true for more than a decade now. Its not, somehow, that the
>folks answering sender support mail wont tell you, its that they cant tell
>you. I suspect that even the system developers couldnt tell you exactly why a
>mail went to bulk or was discarded or was rejected.
Toward the end of my careen at MS, my analysis of the architecture that the
system was evolving toward (on the O365 side) told me that it should be
possible for a message to completely disappear without the possibility that
any plausible investigation process would reveal why (or even if) a particular
message met a particular fate.
This architecture has been carried over into the "unified" system, with
considerable elaboration. I often use the term "apparently occasionally
non-deterministic" for the platform.
Having watched the system behaviour from the outside for the past eight years,
I have found no reason to alter this impression. I doubt strongly that there
is any individual with a full synoptic grasp of the System itself.
>With that being said, they try to help senders, much more than a lot of other
>mailbox providers.
Certainly most of the individuals I worked with had a keen understanding of
the issues facing all the parties. The problem is that those who make budget
decisions or control the deployment of resources in the Corporation will often
have disjoint understandings and a different set of primary objectives.
(Then there was our Search for that individual or group who were actually
required and empowered to read and answer abuse@ and postmaster@...)
>Filters are not static, they are adjusting all the time. Sometimes just keep
>trying is the right thing to do. Sometimes give it a rest for a week (or 2
>or 3) and let your reputation reset is the right thing to do. Sometimes it
>feels like there is nothing the sender can do to change delivery.
The advice that MJW gave a while back (If you see significant deferrals, STOP
ALL SENDING for at least an hour. If the problem persists, stop for 24
hours.) has proved to be worthwhile. Fortunately, on the platform my clients
are using, implementing that for any recipient system is trivial.
>MS users and MS policy makers are about the only folks who are going to be
>able to change what MS is doing. It sucks for those of us who are looking at
>the mail in our outbound queues and going yknow, this person paid for this
>email and MS isnt letting me deliver it or this person probably really
>wants their appointment reminder, but MS isnt letting me deliver it or
>Auntie susie really wants to hear from cousin joan, sucks microsoft doesnt
>like this but complaining on mailop isnt going to change any of that.
"Microsoft" and "Systems Microsoft is presently running" are distinct
entities, often with no discernible connection other than the accidental.
When it was possible to do so, I spent a considerable amount of my work day
investigating reported false positives, and fixed a lot of unneeded damage.
Eventually I was reassigned.
In the end, however, "How to prevent CEOs of large client corporations from
calling Rajesh Jha in the middle of the night because of massive spam
problems" will become "How to prevent Rajesh Jha from calling ME in the middle
of the night due to client spam problems", which will then tend to drift to
the top of one's priorities. (Rajesh Jha was $BIGNUM pay grades above us all,
at the time.)
I will point out to the assembled multitude that the world of email
experienced by a spam analyst at Microsoft or Y!/AOL or gmail is remarkably
different from the world of email experienced by someone trying to operate an
ethical and effective email sending operation, or to advise those that do.
Then add, on top of that, designers and developers who personally are
relatively unconnected to actual email operations as a whole...
Your world (and mine, now) could actually be considerably worse.
mdr
--
"There are no laws here, only agreements."
-- Masahiko
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