[uf-new] New proposal: Microformat for email unsubscribe

[Dan Brickley]

On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 7:42 AM, Indus Khaitan <khaitan at gmail.com> wrote:
> ufrs,
>
> I'm researching few extensions to an open source email client. One of
> the things I'm exploring is standardizing the unsubscribe information
> which is normally buried in the footer using a new microformat for
> annotating unsubscribe information.
>
> Benefits of the microformat:
> 1. Standardizing/semanticizing of unsubscribe information will allow
> automation for handling unsubscribes
> 2. Further to (1), email clients may extract the unsubscribe and
> present it in a different view altogether
> 3. Further to (1), custom unsubscribe workflows can be 'embedded' as
> the format matures

For clarity, is your expectation that this information would be in the
footer of HTML mail messages? Or in the Web site(s) that those
messages reference?

> Comparables:
> 1. There is an optional email header called 'List-unsubscribe' which
> is already in production use by GMail and other vendors

Most mail processing is centered around headers. Do you see particular
benefits to adopting a microformat here? Ease of authoring, of
consuming, of extensibility etc?

cheers,

Dan

> Wanted to get your feedback before putting up an
> exploratory-discussions page. If you are looking to dig deeper, I have
> written it up here at
> http://www.khaitan.org/blog/unsubscribe-microformat/
>
> Thx,
> Indus Khaitan
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