General listing policies

Sites are submitted for consideration to the rfc-ignorant.org database by individuals around the world. In many cases, there is no non-obtrusive method of determining whether or not a site meets the criteria. For example, there is no definitive way of testing that <postmaster@domain> will fail if the mail server doesn't reject it at the RCPT-TO stage - if you commit to the DATA stage, and you're wrong, then the recipient postmaster gets your test message in their mailbox. It is this site's firm belief that, if a site is obeying the RFC (which they are, by having a working address in that case), that the site owner should not have to delete a message from a tester.

In these cases, evidence is accepted from the end-user at face value. The submitting IP and the date and time are stored in the database along with the evidence provided, and appear in any lookup request for a given domain.

If a site is believed to be listed in error, or has corrected the problem which caused its listing, you should use the form which is linked from your listing detail page and request that you be tested for compliance. If your domain is no longer non-compliant, the entry will be marked as cleared in the database.

Also, before a site is submitted, the submitter must have made a due diligence effort to notify the system maintainer of the problem. In some cases, this may be impossible, and this is understood, but some effort must have been made.

Please note..., after sending them a "pre-submission" notice, you should probably wait a business day or two, to give the domain-holder the opportunity to fix the situation without generating a listing in our database. The whole point of the pre-submission notification is to offer "the carrot" in advance of the stick. Obviously, if your mail bounces, etc., you may determine that there's nothing to wait for, but if there's no immediate feedback indicating failure, give them a day or so to sort it out before getting us involved.

If a site is listed legitimately, it obviously may request removal upon correction of whatever issue has earned them a listing. In the event that a site, once removed, reverts back to its previous behavior, removal may require receipt (via snail-mail) of a signed letter from someone of authority at the domain/IP-space holder, indicating that such behavior has been halted (again), and acknowledging that if it resumes again, they will be re-listed in our database permanently.

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