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Grex > Coop13 > #359: Membership initative: Allowing members to POP their E-mail | |
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| Author |
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scholar
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Membership initative: Allowing members to POP their E-mail
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Sep 4 04:47 UTC 2006 |
I am a member in good standing, and this is a member initative.
Here's the proposal: members will be provided with the capability to retrieve
E-mail on Grex remotely.
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| 22 responses total. |
scholar
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response 1 of 22:
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Sep 4 04:48 UTC 2006 |
According to Steve', this would be an inducement to potential members.
I endorse taking this proposal to vote.
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steve
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response 2 of 22:
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Sep 4 04:55 UTC 2006 |
This would have some interesting consequences for Grex. It might bring in
more members, but it would also be a burden on Grex, and would cost bandwidth.
I believe we get 50G of traffic a month for our current payment, so if we went
above that I think we'd be looking at another $50/mo for another 50G. I'm
not 100% sure of those numbers, but they're in the right ballpark.
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scholar
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response 3 of 22:
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Sep 4 05:07 UTC 2006 |
I doubt allowing members to POP their mail would use up a significant amount
of bandwidth, but if this proposal passes, Grex's staff would be able to
monitor usage and restrict it if necessary so that Cyberspace Communications
doesn't get hit with an extra charge.
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steve
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response 4 of 22:
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Sep 4 05:09 UTC 2006 |
And then halt the ability to POP for the rest of the month? That
sounds like a good way to get folks mad at us.
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scholar
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response 5 of 22:
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Sep 4 05:28 UTC 2006 |
There might be cases where that's necessary, but I'm sure there are less
severe restrictions that could be applied.
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mcnally
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response 6 of 22:
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Sep 4 05:54 UTC 2006 |
If you're reading mail on Grex and you're not seated at the console
you are already reading it remotely.
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scholar
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response 7 of 22:
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Sep 4 06:57 UTC 2006 |
Mike, many E-mail programs (Outlook Express, for example) retrieve E-mail by
making a connection to a remote server and downloading stored messages to the
user's computer for reading.
Grex currently doesn't allow users to read their mail remotely in this way,
and that's what I'm proposing we enable.
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nharmon
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response 8 of 22:
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Sep 4 13:29 UTC 2006 |
Instead of POP, why not allow IMAP? I believe IMAP would be less
bandwidth intensive.
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krj
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response 9 of 22:
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Sep 4 13:36 UTC 2006 |
Proposals to provide extra benefits to members are not in line with
the philosophy Grex was founded on. The outbound-access/membership
link is a messy historical accident and not a model we should
return to.
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aruba
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response 10 of 22:
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Sep 4 17:44 UTC 2006 |
Re #6,7: David - Mike is pointing out that your proposal is poorly worded.
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scholar
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response 11 of 22:
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Sep 4 20:05 UTC 2006 |
Re. 10: And I was pointing out he was wrong.
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cross
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response 12 of 22:
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Sep 4 22:39 UTC 2006 |
Regarding #2; I no longer by the resource/burden argument: grex has resources
to spare since moving to the PC platform and into colo. Before suggesting
that allowing POP access (for the only 1000 or so users who actually use grex
for email) is going to swamp our network connection, I'd like to see some
numbers.
Regarding #8; Yes and no. IMAP provides facilities for retrieving parts of
messages, whereas POP isn't so great at this (or generally isn't used in that
way), but typically, mail remains on the server, and at the end of the day,
to get the entire contents of the message, no matter how you access it (via
POP, IMAP, or an MUA on grex itself) you're still sending largely the same
bits over the wire. Of course, if you're working with lots of attachments,
it may many some difference since the protocols one would typically use to
download binary attachments are somewhat more efficient than the encodings
used in email messages themselves.
Regarding #11; No, it's not that well worded. Why make enemies by quibbling
over language, when you're actually making a decent proposal?
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tod
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response 13 of 22:
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Sep 5 04:14 UTC 2006 |
I remember when Grex ran USENET for members and it was a pretty nice feature.
Now, certain staff/members don't even want to allow POP3? Absurd.
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scholar
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response 14 of 22:
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Sep 5 04:37 UTC 2006 |
re. 12: okay, i give up!
The official wording of the proposal is now the following: Grex shall allow
members of Cyberspace Communications Inc. to access their E-mail via the Post
Office Protocol or the Internet Message Access Protocol.
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krj
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response 15 of 22:
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Sep 5 20:54 UTC 2006 |
Another argument in opposition: Grex should not be making
its mail service more attractive while there are still basic
stability problems and multi-day downtimes.
Essentially this proposal says Grex should move to more of a
fee-for-service model, at a point where our service reliability
is not too good.
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tod
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response 16 of 22:
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Sep 5 22:59 UTC 2006 |
I agree. I think proposals should be better focused on soliciting staff
volunteers that know how to patch systems.
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nharmon
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response 17 of 22:
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Sep 5 23:35 UTC 2006 |
That is a good idea.
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cross
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response 18 of 22:
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Sep 7 23:55 UTC 2006 |
I don't think we should patch. We should move to a more stable platform.
OpenBSD ain't it. FreeBSD is.
I really wish, in retrospect, that I'd pushed harder for FreeBSD.
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tod
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response 19 of 22:
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Sep 8 07:02 UTC 2006 |
I think Grex should be a flat YABB cgi script running on some 3rd party ISP's
web service.
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krj
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response 20 of 22:
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Sep 8 18:17 UTC 2006 |
That's one possible future path. However, my strong belief is that
online communities are intimately wedded to their software interface,
and if you make radical changes to that, the old community breaks
up and you have to start over.
I don't believe you take away the open-Unix model and continue
to have this Grex community.
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tod
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response 21 of 22:
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Sep 9 00:39 UTC 2006 |
This community needs a health & hygiene program.
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cross
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response 22 of 22:
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Sep 9 04:21 UTC 2006 |
This town needs an enema.
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