Regarding the "E-mail this user" feature: Currently it says:
"If this user has entered a valid e-mail address in his or her user preferences, the form below will send a single message. (...)"
Is there any way for the sender to see if his email will actually be delivered? Would it make sense to log this as a feature request/bug?
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
Jens Ropers wrote:
Regarding the "E-mail this user" feature: Currently it says:
"If this user has entered a valid e-mail address in his or her user preferences, the form below will send a single message. (...)"
Is there any way for the sender to see if his email will actually be delivered? Would it make sense to log this as a feature request/bug?
In such a situation there also needs to be some protection from those who want to exploit this feature for creating lists of spam victims.
Ec
On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 11:12 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Is there any way for the sender to see if his email will actually be delivered? Would it make sense to log this as a feature request/bug?
In such a situation there also needs to be some protection from those who want to exploit this feature for creating lists of spam victims.
Probably a mail-throttling feature would be a better way to deal with this.
Either that, or a captcha for sending mail.
~ESP
On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 19:10 +0200, Jens Ropers wrote:
Regarding the "E-mail this user" feature: Currently it says:
"If this user has entered a valid e-mail address in his or her user preferences, the form below will send a single message. (...)"
Is there any way for the sender to see if his email will actually be delivered? Would it make sense to log this as a feature request/bug?
That's a documentation problem. If the user hasn't entered a valid e-mail address, the form won't come up.
~ESP
On 10 Oct 2004, at 20:40, Evan Prodromou wrote:
On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 19:10 +0200, Jens Ropers wrote:
Regarding the "E-mail this user" feature: Currently it says:
"If this user has entered a valid e-mail address in his or her user preferences, the form below will send a single message. (...)"
Is there any way for the sender to see if his email will actually be delivered? Would it make sense to log this as a feature request/bug?
That's a documentation problem. If the user hasn't entered a valid e-mail address, the form won't come up.
~ESP
Okay, now I can't find/edit the relevant template/special page to change the text (and I'm also not an admin, in case that's required) -- Can somebody change the wording accordingly?
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
Evan Prodromou schrieb:
On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 19:10 +0200, Jens Ropers wrote:
Regarding the "E-mail this user" feature: Currently it says:
"If this user has entered a valid e-mail address in his or her user preferences, the form below will send a single message. (...)"
Is there any way for the sender to see if his email will actually be delivered? Would it make sense to log this as a feature request/bug?
That's a documentation problem. If the user hasn't entered a valid e-mail address, the form won't come up.
But the address isn't really checked for validity, maybe in a technical way, but I fear many people are entering an address like spam123@spam.com.
Kurt
On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 21:02 +0200, Kurt Jansson wrote:
That's a documentation problem. If the user hasn't entered a valid e-mail address, the form won't come up.
But the address isn't really checked for validity, maybe in a technical way, but I fear many people are entering an address like spam123@spam.com.
Since the "From:" address on the email is the sending user's email address, I believe what will happen is that the sending user will receive a MTA error email.
~ESP
A rejected e-mail returns to "Return path" as used in
- Return-path: wikitech-l-bounces@wikimedia.org for wikitech-l issues - Return-path: wiki@wikimedia.org for "email this user"
I do not know what a MTA is.
Regards Reinhardt
----- Original Message ----- From: Evan Prodromou To: Wikimedia developers Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2004 9:40 PM Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] email this user -- question Since the "From:" address on the email is the sending user's email address, I believe what will happen is that the sending user will receive a MTA error email.
~ESP
-- Evan Prodromou evan@wikitravel.org
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On 10 Oct 2004, at 21:44, Reinhardt Wiewe wrote:
<snip> I do not know what a MTA is.
Regards Reinhardt
An MTA is a Mail Transfer Agent, aka Message Transfer Agent, aka SMPTD (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Daemon), aka--in plain English--an email server (referring mostly to the piece of software that does the email shuffling work and mostly not to the physical box that piece of software runs on).
On 10 Oct 2004, at 21:02, Kurt Jansson wrote:
Evan Prodromou schrieb:
On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 19:10 +0200, Jens Ropers wrote:
Regarding the "E-mail this user" feature: Currently it says:
"If this user has entered a valid e-mail address in his or her user preferences, the form below will send a single message. (...)"
Is there any way for the sender to see if his email will actually be delivered? Would it make sense to log this as a feature request/bug?
That's a documentation problem. If the user hasn't entered a valid e-mail address, the form won't come up.
But the address isn't really checked for validity, maybe in a technical way, but I fear many people are entering an address like spam123@spam.com.
Kurt
IMHO the concern about individual users possibly having entered a nonworking email address is mostly a separate issue to what I asked about. I'm concerned about the fact that users (including me prior to this email conversation) will think that their email might not be ''sent'' because the other user might not have provided an email address (when in reality it ''will'' be ''sent'' because as per the above info that page only comes up if the other user did in fact provide an email address).
Now as regards the separate email-related issue:
I. It is true that an email which was ''sent'' may not get ''delivered'', for various reasons (account maxed out, prolonged server outage, etc.). As regards that possibility: Do the emails that get sent currently have a ''both'' the '''Return-Path''' and '''Reply-To''' headers set to the user/sender's address? If not, can this be changed?
II. Finally, yes, it's true, our system of accepting email addresses is not fully opt-in. In theory, someone could create and account giving another person's email address, then do a lot of trolling and have any angry email messages delivered to the (probably very surprised) other person's mailbox. That's a bit of a roundabout way of spamming people, though. If a spammer already has another person's email address, then it would be so much easier to spam them directly. Granted, we may still want to consider changing our signup process so that any email addresses submitted will be verified in a way similar to Mailman's opt-in process. That might make sense. It's only a minor inconvenience to users signing up and it's probably best practice to do it. Any motivation to code this, anybody (because I sadly can't)?
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 21:52 +0200, Jens Ropers wrote:
Granted, we may still want to consider changing our signup process so that any email addresses submitted will be verified in a way similar to Mailman's opt-in process. That might make sense. It's only a minor inconvenience to users signing up and it's probably best practice to do it. Any motivation to code this, anybody (because I sadly can't)?
I think it's an excellent idea. Why don't you register it in Bugzilla?
~ESP
On 10 Oct 2004, at 22:19, Evan Prodromou wrote:
On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 21:52 +0200, Jens Ropers wrote:
Granted, we may still want to consider changing our signup process so that any email addresses submitted will be verified in a way similar to Mailman's opt-in process. That might make sense. It's only a minor inconvenience to users signing up and it's probably best practice to do it. Any motivation to code this, anybody (because I sadly can't)?
I think it's an excellent idea. Why don't you register it in Bugzilla?
~ESP
Done. http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=677
-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com
== lot of fluctuation regarding e-mail addresses ==
I questioned Brion VIBBER on this issue these days. My opinion is, that for the community it is important to have "nonambiguos communication facilities". If somone wants to spam, he / she can do it anyway. The function "email this user" is available only for visitors logged in. Where is the risc?
As a webmaster of an alumni site http://www.lenauschule.de/ having implemented a similar feature (e-mailing registered colueges) I experienced a lot of fluctuation regarding e-mail addresses. We use "Return-path:" too. Returned e-mails are exchanged manualy if valid alternative e-mail addesses (three in total) are available.
Analysing the reasons for rejected e-mails there are lots of: account full, spam flter rejects, other rejects because company e-mail addresses where provided, user unknown etc.
The feature is implemented at http://lenauschule.de/jahrgang/1975/ . Search Wiewe at the end and click on the e-mail address. You have to reenter the number next to the "chricht senden" button.
Regards Reinhardt [[w:en:User:Gangleri]] http://easy.go.is/gangleri/
The only usefull way to verify an e-mail address is the one used at http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/. Many bancropted service providers will not return e-mails, who would never reach customers.
Regards Reinhardt
An inacurate indication about expiration of an e-mail address could be seen verifying User contributions as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=... .
If there are no contributions for months the e-mail address may have changed too.
Regards Reinhardt
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