Mail issues in a Backtalk world

Sep 13 20:11 UTC 1996

I want to raise a possible problem that may arrise if Backtalk becomes a
popular way to access Grex.  We may get a population of users who never
actually log into Grex, but only use their Grex accounts to run Backtalk and
participate in the conferences.

This causes several problems, some of which are relatively easy to deal with
(like making sure that we don't nuke Backtalk user's accounts because they
haven't logged in for 30 days).  But one possible problem is a bit trickier
from a policy point of view.

Users who don't log in, won't very easily be able to read their mail.  Thus
they could very easily get loads of mail accumulating on Grex that they don't
know about or can't access.

Things that might be done include:

[1] Have Backtalk print "You have mail" messages, together with instructions
    to telnet in if you want to read them.

    This is a problem because some people, like AOL users, can't telnet.

[2] Have Backtalk print "You have mail" but as above, but in addition give
    the user the option of creating a .forward file to an email address
    elsewhere.  It would forward all his/her saved mail and also set up the
    .forward file so that all future mail would be forwarded.

    This is a problem because some people, like those connecting in from the
    AADL, don't necessarily have other Email addresses.

[3] Start a pop server on Grex.  Then Netscape could be used to read and send
    mail.

    Grex would be even more heavily flooded with people who only want to use
    it as a mail drop.

[4] Write a cgi-bin program that would let users read and delete their mail
    over the web interface but not send any.  The could still reply to mail
    using the usual mailto:whomever@where.ever URL's that most browsers
    support, but their sent mail wouldn't cross Grex's link.

    This still would attract lots of users who only want to use Grex to send
    and receive mail.  It'd be a largish programming job.

I guess I'd kind of favor option [2] (which includes [1]).  It actually
encourages people to take their mail elsewhere.  I can easily set it up so
that when you use Backtalk to look up a user, it will give the address out
of his .forward file as a clickable "mailto:" URL, tempting people to move
their mail business entirely off of Grex.  It would go straight from the
sender's machine to the receivers machine without passing through Grex.

Still, there are some people who have neither a telnet client nor an Email
address.

So does anyone have better ideas?   Opinions?

response 2 of 90:

Sep 13 20:54 UTC 1996

How about just not having mail a part of a Backtalk login for conferencing?

response 4 of 90:

Sep 14 00:27 UTC 1996

Mail is really a nice complement to conferencing.  Often it's good to be able
to send a mail message to a user instead of posting a reply to his item,
taking your comments from a public forum to a private forum.  It'd be
sad to deny it to some users.

response 6 of 90:

Sep 14 05:16 UTC 1996

You want people to have access to e-mail because it is a convenient
adjunct to conferencing, and you don't want people to have access to
e-mail because they would use Grex just as a mail drop. Sounds schizoid.
Backtalk conferencing on Grex, I thgink, will be novel enough without
an e-mail adjunct. Of course, users could exchange their regular e-mail
addresses, and use them off Backtalk. That's not very difficult as you just
have an e-mail client and the Backtalk client open simultaneously.

response 8 of 90:

Sep 14 16:33 UTC 1996

To put it another way, the philosophies that Grex is based upon
should be constant no matter which manner it is presented.  Grex
on the Web should not come to be seen as different than Grex on the
'net.  Make these distinctions and you end up with two different
setups with the same name.  People who access Grex via the web page
should be using the same board that those of us accessing it through
telnet do, subject to the same philosophy andbylaws.

Therefore, it free e-mail is not offered to those users who cannot
telnet or dial-in, itshouldnt be offered to anyone free.  It is
inconsistent with grex's free-access philosophy to restrict 
priviledges based on method of access.  Doing so based on whether
you are a member or not is one thing.  Doing so on this basis would
be discrimination.

Whether Grex succceeds in the future depends on the consistency of
its philosophies and what it offers as much as anything else.  Not 
offering free email to web users is just as unfair as if only dial-in
members could get free email and not those who telnet.

response 10 of 90:

Sep 14 19:49 UTC 1996

Basically, for some of these services strongly in demand, we have offered them
in a somewhat unattractive package -- You can browse the net from Grex, but
you have to use lynx;  You can have your webpage on Grex, but not with
pictures;  You can recieve mail on Grex, but you have to use a tty-based
mail reader.  Since all of these are secondary to what we percieve as our
main mission, we don't want to provide people with incentives to seek these
services elsewhere.

Conferencing isn't a secondary mission.  We'd really like to have as good
a conference interface (or interfaces) as possible.

Yes, this is a bit schizophrenic.  But when you are giving a service away
for free that most of the world is charging for, you can hardly expect to be
in perfect mental health.

response 12 of 90:

Sep 15 03:06 UTC 1996

A limit of one e-mail message per day.....  ;->

response 14 of 90:

Sep 15 07:23 UTC 1996

Actually, on a bbs I've been to alot lately, they've set up a conference where
email is done, just the same as any message.. the only difference is, you can
only read messages sent to you or by you. You are aso only notified of new
messages, when they are to you or by you. Would something like this work on
Backtalk?

response 16 of 90:

Sep 15 17:30 UTC 1996

Re #14: I suspect that on that bbs, private mail messages and
public bbs messages are stored in identical or nearly-identical
formats. Such an arrangement would be harder on Grex, where mail
messages and conference items are stored in very different
formats. Harder but not impossible -- software would have to
be written, a mail-to-Picospan gateway.

It's almost trivially easy for any user to set something up to
enable them to read their grex mail over the web. (I won't say
how but will leave it as an exercise for the reader.)
Unfortunately it would also allow their grex mail to be read by
the rest of the world as well. But a layer of security could be
provided by a cgi-script...

response 18 of 90:

Sep 15 21:54 UTC 1996

Re #16: but the mail file readable over the web could be in a non-public
directory with a non-obvious name, could it not? 

response 20 of 90:

Sep 15 22:51 UTC 1996

Actually, I don't think John's first would work at all.  Your mail file isn't
readable to others, and httpd is other.  You might be able to permit it
to be readable, but I don't think it would stay that way, because I suspect
the mail software wouldn't be inclined to leave it that way.  Plus you
couldn't delete the you have read.

However, it would be relatively easy to make a web-based mailreader using
mh, as John suggests.  You need to build some code that allows the system
to run unix commands as a user authenticated through the web, but this may
need to be done anyway to allow web-users to change their passwords and the
like.  Still, it's a doable project.

I'm not convinced this is a great idea though.  The great majority of users
accessing Backtalk would have mail accounts on other systems.  We don't
want to encourage those users to get their mail on Grex.  I'd much rather
have them give some email address off of Grex, and provide that to other
backtalk users as their mail address.  Then mail sent from one Backtalk user
to another will stay entirely off of Grex.

response 22 of 90:

Sep 16 02:23 UTC 1996

I think people are over sensitive about secrecy. I'm a private person, but
99% of what I keep private would be of no interest or use to anyone. If
someone did find my mail, they wouldn't get much. The probability of
anyone trying is probably less than someone stealing mail from my post box
out on the street. 

response 24 of 90:

Sep 16 13:44 UTC 1996

Best of all:  REQUIRE a valid e-mail address for Backtalk users.
Create a pass-code as part of the account creation process, and
e-mail that pass code to the user-given mail address.  Require
the pass-code as well as the user password for the first login.
This guarantees that the user has a valid e-mail address.