poll printed only "{applied} applied, {dropped} dropped", and dropped meant
every outcome that wasn't a published post. Answering a newcomer and refusing
a post both read "0 applied, 1 dropped", as did a mail with no Reply-To, a
blocked sender, a host outside register_hosts, silent mode, and a spent rate
limit. Eleven ways out of the stranger path, all indistinguishable.
That cost real time. Twice I read a successful info reply as a failure and had
to open state.json to tell, and once I had to ask the author to forward the
refusal, because the reason is nowhere in the log and the daemon's sent copies
are sealed to itself.
Outcome now carries its own line and poll prints it, so the phrase is written
where the context is and emitted in one place. A new branch can't return
Dropped without saying why, because it won't compile. Answered splits from
dropped in the counters too: a reply sent is not a mail ignored.
The silence toward senders is deliberate and unchanged — a reply would confirm
whether an address exists. The operator's journal is a different audience and
reaches nobody else. The enum says so, so nobody later "fixes" a quiet drop by
answering the sender.
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