LDC wrote:

The questions, then, are (1) when a new user signs

up, giving an e-

mail address, should we further require that he check

a box

saying "allow other wikipedians to mail me" or should

we let him

check a box saying "don't allow other wikipedians to

mail me". The e-

mail address is never published in any case, and the

only mails

received are one-to-ones, not lists, but I suppose

opt-in is still

the more responsible thing to do. (2) Perhaps the

double opt-in

confirmation message could be sent whenever this

option is selected.

(3) The mail messages themselves might have a

section something

like "This mail was sent from Wikipedia's e-mail

function. If you

don't want to receive mails like this, go to..."

If we do decide to have this function, I think that in order for it to be at all useful the user account set-up should allow the user to opt-out if they click the box next to "don't allow other wikipedians to mail me". It has been my experience that most people simply accept the defaults on webforms and if the default is set /not/ to enable this function, then there won�t be enough users with the function enabled to make it commonplace (if the great majority of users don�t have a link to �Email this user� then other users visiting user pages won�t look to the link).

I also agree with your previous statement about requiring sysops to have this function enabled (anybody taking on sysop status needs to be contactable to the community and other sysops). I�m not sure if it would be worth the effect to hard-code this requirement into the software � visiting sysop pages will reveal who is and who is not adhering to policy (if this does become one).

It would also be nice if sysops could be able to email all other sysops when needed (or even to each and every user signed up if absolutely needed � like if somebody hacked the server and stole user passwords). For example, I had to manually post a message to each and every sysop a while back warning them not to use the administrative move feature because of a serious bug that truncated page histories. It would have been nice to draft a single email for that.

BTW, would it be possible for users to eventually have @wikipedia.com email addresses (on a pay basis open only to users with user accounts � but that requirement isn�t essential to me)? I would happily give Bomis or a �Wikipedia Foundation� 30 bucks a year for a maveric149@wikipedia.com (maveric149@wikipedia.org would be even better) than have to pay the same amount for maveric149@yahoo.com.

--maveric149

__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Sign up for SBC Yahoo! Dial - First Month Free http://sbc.yahoo.com