Yes, I agree...the same way you feel email is a broken protocol I feel (even more strongly that) HTTP is a broken protocol, and I can get really livid about it, so I hear you, believe me.
And yes, I took it as a a given that anyone might respond that the cost to users and email providers in terms of damage done by opening and clicking infected links in spam emails outweighs any benefit gained by not taking such drastic measures against it. Filtering to the Spam folder could be a great way to solve a few problems around this if the public was more educated and aware about how important it is to be careful but I guess as a practical matter that's never going to happen.
But I feel simple communication is not being utilized effectively enough to prevent a lot of the problems websites like your own can wind up having. I keep running the "friend at Google" scenario through my mind, in which you update DW's MX records, then notice an email slowdown and trace the cause of the delay back to the MX records update, but then you just contact a friend or person serving in some helpful official capacity at Google and bam! the problem just goes away. As it should!
Maybe this is not how the world works but it seems major email providers could have a list of safe senders with websites like your own included and when there's a problem like the MX records update, before they let that slow everything down there's a protocol in place where either they know to contact you or another known site admin to make sure everything is OK before slowing DW's email down or where you know you can get in touch with someone on their side to the same effect.
It's the turnkey-ness of the Internet that gets to me; you can look up someone's profile in seconds online even if you don't know them but major websites and email providers can't communicate with each other more effectively and I just don't understand why.
I mean, I'd bet there are people at Google right now who know what Dreamwidth's about, who can safely assume DW could not possibly be a spam sender unless it got hacked, who know Dreamwidth's like LiveJournal, who know sites like LJ are generally considered safe senders, so there is a shortcut way out of this through better communication between email providers and DW itself, it's just the providers (apparently) don't currently allow that communication to happen, relying on automation instead to (incorrectly) determine and (fail to) solve problems. Which is slowing up things on Dreamwidth for all of us and seems unnecessary.
As to email being broken, while I'm not quite as passionate about why that's bad as you are, I think it's bad enough that it should all be replaced with something like Slack. :)
Re: Oh, wow
And yes, I took it as a a given that anyone might respond that the cost to users and email providers in terms of damage done by opening and clicking infected links in spam emails outweighs any benefit gained by not taking such drastic measures against it. Filtering to the Spam folder could be a great way to solve a few problems around this if the public was more educated and aware about how important it is to be careful but I guess as a practical matter that's never going to happen.
But I feel simple communication is not being utilized effectively enough to prevent a lot of the problems websites like your own can wind up having. I keep running the "friend at Google" scenario through my mind, in which you update DW's MX records, then notice an email slowdown and trace the cause of the delay back to the MX records update, but then you just contact a friend or person serving in some helpful official capacity at Google and bam! the problem just goes away. As it should!
Maybe this is not how the world works but it seems major email providers could have a list of safe senders with websites like your own included and when there's a problem like the MX records update, before they let that slow everything down there's a protocol in place where either they know to contact you or another known site admin to make sure everything is OK before slowing DW's email down or where you know you can get in touch with someone on their side to the same effect.
It's the turnkey-ness of the Internet that gets to me; you can look up someone's profile in seconds online even if you don't know them but major websites and email providers can't communicate with each other more effectively and I just don't understand why.
I mean, I'd bet there are people at Google right now who know what Dreamwidth's about, who can safely assume DW could not possibly be a spam sender unless it got hacked, who know Dreamwidth's like LiveJournal, who know sites like LJ are generally considered safe senders, so there is a shortcut way out of this through better communication between email providers and DW itself, it's just the providers (apparently) don't currently allow that communication to happen, relying on automation instead to (incorrectly) determine and (fail to) solve problems. Which is slowing up things on Dreamwidth for all of us and seems unnecessary.
As to email being broken, while I'm not quite as passionate about why that's bad as you are, I think it's bad enough that it should all be replaced with something like Slack. :)