Re: Changing the default for `send-mail-function'

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ted Zlatanov writes:
 > On Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:56:50 +0200 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <address@hidden> 
 > wrote: 
 > 
 > LMI> And the result is the same: We get bug reports from users who don't know
 > LMI> their own identities.
 > 
 > Do we want to accept anonymous bug reports?

Why not?  It's true that if there's no return path, you have to depend
on the sender to get in touch if you need more information, and that
slows/stops progress on the bug in some significant number of cases.
But at the very least, it provides a historical record of a particular
symptom at a point in time.

OTOH, many issues are easy to resolve based on the information in the
initial report.

 > I don't mean spam; the reports can be authenticated in some other way to
 > ensure they are genuine.

The reporters cannot be identified, let alone authenticated; you don't
even know that the submitter isn't a dog.  The best you can do is
ensure a channel for requesting more information, but that is easy
enough to ignore or abandon (and often is ignored).

Filtering spam and the occasional crank (eg, who keeps opening new bug
numbers for the same not-a-bug) will be done on the basis of content,
as usual.