A filter script is not a person

Answer A filter script is not a person. RFC 5228 defines Sieve, a language for filtering email when it is delivered. The script can file the message, keep it, or throw it away before anyone opens the mailbox. On a solo ad, that outcome is a rule the recipient, or their provider, already wrote. It is not a vote on your headline.

The note that started this: RFC 5228, Sieve: An Email Filtering Language, RFC 5228.

People talk about the inbox as if a human sits at the door. Often a script sits at the door. It was written on a Tuesday in March, or it shipped with the mailbox. Your June send walks into it. If you are checking safe solo ads sellers, you cannot see that script, and you should not let a seller narrate its result as the reader's mood.

The base specification is the language. Later extensions add vacation replies and explicit rejects. Those are specific tricks. Today is the general fact underneath them. Delivery time is early enough that the person may never see the message, and late enough that the sending server may already have been told the message was accepted. Accepted by the server, then filed by a script, then never opened, is a normal path. It is three events. An invoice that collapses them into delivered or ignored is hiding the middle one.

What is Sieve?

RFC 5228 defines Sieve as a language for filtering email at delivery time. A script can file, keep, or discard a message before the person opens the mailbox. The script is not the person.

You do not need to read the language to use the idea. The tests are ordinary. The sender matches a name. The subject contains a word. The message is larger than a size. The actions are ordinary too. Put it in a folder. Leave it in the inbox. Throw it away. Forward it. A reader who once clicked always file mail from strangers has built a door your guest appearance will not get through, even when the address is real and the offer is honest.

Providers run their own rules in their own systems. Those rules may not be Sieve at all. The lesson does not depend on the brand of the filter. A machine decision and a human decision are different inputs. Your report should be allowed to say so. If the seller's platform cannot see the reader's script, and it usually cannot, the honest sentence is we do not know whether a filter ate it. That sentence is worth more than a fake open rate.

• Human clicks stay on their own line.
• Unknown filters are called unknown.
• A discard is not described as a person declining.
• The seller does not promise you the inbox of every script.

Does a filtered solo ad count as ignored by the reader?

No. If a rule filed or discarded the message, the reader may never have had a chance to ignore it. Ask the seller not to call that an engagement result.

Ignored means a person saw the chance and walked past it. Filtered means the chance was removed. The repair is different. If people see the mail and do not click, the offer or the list match is the question. If a rule is hiding the mail, more adjectives will not help, and a second drop to the same rule will not help. You may not be able to tell which one happened from the outside. You can refuse a seller who pretends they can, without evidence, every time the numbers disappoint.

There is a version of this you do control. Your own test account can have a script. If you judge the seller by a mailbox you have trained to file newsletters, you are grading their deliverability with your own rule. Use a plain mailbox for the test, or read the script before you blame the domain.

What should a report say about filtered mail?

It should separate delivery, scripted outcomes, and human actions. A click is still a click. A rule that hid the message is a different line.

Most solo reports cannot see the reader's script. Say that. Then show what you can see: accepted, bounced, clicked, complained. Leave a blank where the filter would be, rather than filling the blank with a story. RFC 5228 is how a mailbox is allowed to have that blank. The person comes later, if the script lets them.

June mail that dies in a folder named Promotions or Newsletters or Old may never have met a reader. Price the send with that possibility on the page. A filter script is not a person, and it is not a refund excuse until someone can show which rule fired.