Hi,
Lot of volunteers are using email to communicate when they discuss wikimedia related issues. Even if it's not a big problem to use personal email there, lot of people, especially administrators do not want to uncover their personal email. Lot of them even have a special private mail for wikipedia purposes. Although wikimedia has own email server on wikimedia domain, it's being given to paid staff only, so question is if it would be worth of having an email service for volunteers who request it (it should be probably limited to users who match some criteria) or just a forward service which can help us to get our personal email hidden (this would not eat space and would be very cheap). I understand that people from foundation might have concerns that volunteers with wikimedia.org emails could cause some troubles or people might be in thought they are employees, so why not to use some another domain, like wmflabs.org for developers and wikipedia.org for wikipedians for example (other domains for respective projects). What do you think?
The WMDE is giving out @wikipedia.de adresses, mine is f.e.: mmovchin@wikipedia.de
Also, users with access to toolserver, have their Toolserver-Adresses, mine is mmovchin@toolserver.org.
I think @wikimedia.org should only have staff of wikimedia. So @wikipedia.org is a great idea.
-- Michael Am 29.03.2012 21:41, schrieb Petr Bena:
Hi,
Lot of volunteers are using email to communicate when they discuss wikimedia related issues. Even if it's not a big problem to use personal email there, lot of people, especially administrators do not want to uncover their personal email. Lot of them even have a special private mail for wikipedia purposes. Although wikimedia has own email server on wikimedia domain, it's being given to paid staff only, so question is if it would be worth of having an email service for volunteers who request it (it should be probably limited to users who match some criteria) or just a forward service which can help us to get our personal email hidden (this would not eat space and would be very cheap). I understand that people from foundation might have concerns that volunteers with wikimedia.org emails could cause some troubles or people might be in thought they are employees, so why not to use some another domain, like wmflabs.org for developers and wikipedia.org for wikipedians for example (other domains for respective projects). What do you think?
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Michael Movchin michael@movchin.de wrote:
I think @wikimedia.org should only have staff of wikimedia. So @wikipedia.org is a great idea.
@wikipedia.org is similarly official-looking, I'm not sure that'll fly.
In the SVN days, Chad and I were toying with the idea of giving committers @mediawiki.org e-mail addresses, partly because it would make the git migration a bit easier.
Roan
On 29.03.2012, 23:50 Roan wrote:
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Michael Movchin michael@movchin.de wrote:
I think @wikimedia.org should only have staff of wikimedia. So @wikipedia.org is a great idea.
@wikipedia.org is similarly official-looking, I'm not sure that'll fly.
It could be @users.wikipedia.org or @volunteers.wikipedia.org
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 3:41 PM, Petr Bena benapetr@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
Lot of volunteers are using email to communicate when they discuss wikimedia related issues. Even if it's not a big problem to use personal email there, lot of people, especially administrators do not want to uncover their personal email. Lot of them even have a special private mail for wikipedia purposes. Although wikimedia has own email server on wikimedia domain, it's being given to paid staff only, so question is if it would be worth of having an email service for volunteers who request it (it should be probably limited to users who match some criteria) or just a forward service which can help us to get our personal email hidden (this would not eat space and would be very cheap). I understand that people from foundation might have concerns that volunteers with wikimedia.org emails could cause some troubles or people might be in thought they are employees, so why not to use some another domain, like wmflabs.org for developers and wikipedia.org for wikipedians for example (other domains for respective projects). What do you think?
We've discussed giving out referrers to people with LDAP accounts (labs, git, etc) at either @wmflabs.org or @users.mediawiki.org. I don't know what the final decision was regarding that though.
-Chad
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:41:12 -0700, Petr Bena benapetr@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
Lot of volunteers are using email to communicate when they discuss wikimedia related issues. Even if it's not a big problem to use personal email there, lot of people, especially administrators do not want to uncover their personal email. Lot of them even have a special private mail for wikipedia purposes. Although wikimedia has own email server on wikimedia domain, it's being given to paid staff only, so question is if it would be worth of having an email service for volunteers who request it (it should be probably limited to users who match some criteria) or just a forward service which can help us to get our personal email hidden (this would not eat space and would be very cheap). I understand that people from foundation might have concerns that volunteers with wikimedia.org emails could cause some troubles or people might be in thought they are employees, so why not to use some another domain, like wmflabs.org for developers and wikipedia.org for wikipedians for example (other domains for respective projects). What do you think?
@wikipedia.org emails sound too official to me.
We have faux *@users.mediawiki.org email addresses for imported svn commits.
So rather than top levels I think we should use *@users.* email addresses with rules similar to what we have for granting irc cloak requests.
ie: Things like: - users.mediawiki.org addresses reserved for committers by shell name - Besides just username@users.wikipedia.org addresses users can request others like username@users.wiktionary.org or username@users.wikimedia.org
Excuse me but it seems this seems to avoid the actual problem.
Although I know the answer for the most part, the question I think we should be asking is more along the lines of "Why are they using email instead of on-wiki discussion threads?"
I personally don't see a lot of gain in providing mailaliases for users.
@wikipedia.org seems too Wikipeida specific and may indeed look too official. @something.wikipedia.org may not scale either because we also have projects on other hostnames (wiktionary, wikibooks, but also species, commons, meta and other *.wikimedia.org wikis).
Also, when we do find a good hostname to use, I think it should be universal and tied to a SUL username (not per-wiki or per-project), so it shouldn't contain the name of a project (wikipedia, wiktionary, commons, ..) and not the name of the software (mediawiki). Something like "users.wikimedia.org" might be appropriate.
If that is done though, would it be an alias (forward) address or would it allow sending (IMAP/POP3). The latter would probably also cost a significant amount of storage over time, so alias/forward is probably better.
However that means that after you reply, your original e-mailaddress is visible. In which case there is no advantage to using an alias over simply using [[Special:EmailUser]], which is effectively also an alias for the first mail.
-- Krinkle
On Mar 29, 2012, at 9:41 PM, Petr Bena wrote:
Hi,
Lot of volunteers are using email to communicate when they discuss wikimedia related issues. Even if it's not a big problem to use personal email there, lot of people, especially administrators do not want to uncover their personal email. Lot of them even have a special private mail for wikipedia purposes. Although wikimedia has own email server on wikimedia domain, it's being given to paid staff only, so question is if it would be worth of having an email service for volunteers who request it (it should be probably limited to users who match some criteria) or just a forward service which can help us to get our personal email hidden (this would not eat space and would be very cheap). I understand that people from foundation might have concerns that volunteers with wikimedia.org emails could cause some troubles or people might be in thought they are employees, so why not to use some another domain, like wmflabs.org for developers and wikipedia.org for wikipedians for example (other domains for respective projects). What do you think?
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
I don't see a reason why it shouldn't look "official"
We are open source project not a part of government or something. So username@wikipedia.org should be perfectly ok for established users, who wouldn't abuse it just as sysop bit is. Also why not just let user pick which domain they like?
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:38 PM, Krinkle krinklemail@gmail.com wrote:
Excuse me but it seems this seems to avoid the actual problem.
Although I know the answer for the most part, the question I think we should be asking is more along the lines of "Why are they using email instead of on-wiki discussion threads?"
I personally don't see a lot of gain in providing mailaliases for users.
@wikipedia.org seems too Wikipeida specific and may indeed look too official. @something.wikipedia.org may not scale either because we also have projects on other hostnames (wiktionary, wikibooks, but also species, commons, meta and other *.wikimedia.org wikis).
Also, when we do find a good hostname to use, I think it should be universal and tied to a SUL username (not per-wiki or per-project), so it shouldn't contain the name of a project (wikipedia, wiktionary, commons, ..) and not the name of the software (mediawiki). Something like "users.wikimedia.org" might be appropriate.
If that is done though, would it be an alias (forward) address or would it allow sending (IMAP/POP3). The latter would probably also cost a significant amount of storage over time, so alias/forward is probably better.
However that means that after you reply, your original e-mailaddress is visible. In which case there is no advantage to using an alias over simply using [[Special:EmailUser]], which is effectively also an alias for the first mail.
-- Krinkle
On Mar 29, 2012, at 9:41 PM, Petr Bena wrote:
Hi,
Lot of volunteers are using email to communicate when they discuss wikimedia related issues. Even if it's not a big problem to use personal email there, lot of people, especially administrators do not want to uncover their personal email. Lot of them even have a special private mail for wikipedia purposes. Although wikimedia has own email server on wikimedia domain, it's being given to paid staff only, so question is if it would be worth of having an email service for volunteers who request it (it should be probably limited to users who match some criteria) or just a forward service which can help us to get our personal email hidden (this would not eat space and would be very cheap). I understand that people from foundation might have concerns that volunteers with wikimedia.org emails could cause some troubles or people might be in thought they are employees, so why not to use some another domain, like wmflabs.org for developers and wikipedia.org for wikipedians for example (other domains for respective projects). What do you think?
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
This is mostly a solution looking for a problem.
On Thursday, March 29, 2012, Petr Bena wrote:
I don't see a reason why it shouldn't look "official"
We are open source project not a part of government or something. So username@wikipedia.org javascript:; should be perfectly ok for established users, who wouldn't abuse it just as sysop bit is. Also why not just let user pick which domain they like?
On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:38 PM, Krinkle <krinklemail@gmail.comjavascript:;> wrote:
Excuse me but it seems this seems to avoid the actual problem.
Although I know the answer for the most part, the question I think we
should be
asking is more along the lines of "Why are they using email instead of on-wiki discussion threads?"
I personally don't see a lot of gain in providing mailaliases for users.
@wikipedia.org seems too Wikipeida specific and may indeed look too
official.
@something.wikipedia.org may not scale either because we also have
projects on
other hostnames (wiktionary, wikibooks, but also species, commons, meta
and
other *.wikimedia.org wikis).
Also, when we do find a good hostname to use, I think it should be
universal and
tied to a SUL username (not per-wiki or per-project), so it shouldn't
contain
the name of a project (wikipedia, wiktionary, commons, ..) and not the
name of
the software (mediawiki). Something like "users.wikimedia.org" might be appropriate.
If that is done though, would it be an alias (forward) address or would
it allow
sending (IMAP/POP3). The latter would probably also cost a significant
amount of
storage over time, so alias/forward is probably better.
However that means that after you reply, your original e-mailaddress is
visible.
In which case there is no advantage to using an alias over simply using [[Special:EmailUser]], which is effectively also an alias for the first
mail.
-- Krinkle
On Mar 29, 2012, at 9:41 PM, Petr Bena wrote:
Hi,
Lot of volunteers are using email to communicate when they discuss wikimedia related issues. Even if it's not a big problem to use personal email there, lot of people, especially administrators do not want to uncover their personal email. Lot of them even have a special private mail for wikipedia purposes. Although wikimedia has own email server on wikimedia domain, it's being given to paid staff only, so question is if it would be worth of having an email service for volunteers who request it (it should be probably limited to users who match some criteria) or just a forward service which can help us to get our personal email hidden (this would not eat space and would be very cheap). I understand that people from foundation might have concerns that volunteers with wikimedia.org emails could cause some troubles or people might be in thought they are employees, so why not to use some another domain, like wmflabs.org for developers and wikipedia.org for wikipedians for example (other domains for respective projects). What do you think?
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org javascript:; https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 7:38 AM, Krinkle krinklemail@gmail.com wrote:
Also, when we do find a good hostname to use, I think it should be universal and tied to a SUL username (not per-wiki or per-project), so it shouldn't contain the name of a project (wikipedia, wiktionary, commons, ..) and not the name of the software (mediawiki). Something like "users.wikimedia.org" might be appropriate.
{username}@users.wmfmail.tld ? separate but not tied to one project and would be hard for users to get it confused with a foundation staff members email and have it automatically foward to whatever email address they have confirmed with.
I've been wanting to grab users.wikimedia as a while as a project/central place for user pages and talk pages, Although we don't support decent cross-wiki transclusion (yet), soft redirects would be fine for that.
If that is done though, would it be an alias (forward) address or would it allow sending (IMAP/POP3). The latter would probably also cost a significant amount of storage over time, so alias/forward is probably better.
A alias would fine for most things (and would solve the legal issues of wmf hosting email as well), but I'm also the same with your comment where most things should be on wiki (unless there is a good reason) compared to e-mail (That is a handy thing about Special:Emailuser not standing out well).
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 7:58 AM, Petr Bena benapetr@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see a reason why it shouldn't look "official"
Spam, Mis-representing themselves, {users|outside people} getting consfused thinking they are getting emails from {the foundation/foundation staff}.
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 12:49 AM, Mono monomium@gmail.com wrote:
This is mostly a solution looking for a problem.
I agree, except for Labs/Git/etc users where there's actually a demonstrable need for this.
-Chad
However that means that after you reply, your original e-mailaddress is visible. In which case there is no advantage to using an alias over simply using [[Special:EmailUser]], which is effectively also an alias for the first mail.
Not at all. You can send mail from any address you choose; which is why, when you send mail, your email provider will recommend you use SMTP servers (POP/IMAP are used to retrieve mail - SMTP is the transfer mechanism) provided by your ISP.
For example my work email is tom@<work address>.com, but my email client connects out to BT's SMTP servers.
This is why email spoofing is so such a problem - there is nothing actually stopping me from sending email as krinkle@gmail.org so long as I can find an SMTP server that will accept my mail. Much of this is filtered out at the other end (by the receiving server, who calculates whether the mail is genuine or not).
Long story short is: if @users.wikipedia.org was set up as an alias then you could use it to send mail - in Gmail it is as simple as adding it in settings as one of your sender addresses, then waiting for a confirmation email to arrive (and click accept).
FWIW my 2p is that it would be handy for me when negotiating with people for images/content release - or continuing OTRS contact outside of OTRS - to have a Wikipedia address.
My thought is that it should be tied to Special:Emailuser. If you have that turned on (and maybe a special EmailAlias right, or other level of control) <username>@users.wikipedia.org aliases to your email address. (I'm trying to apply a level of KISS here).
Tom
Petr Bena wrote:
Lot of volunteers are using email to communicate when they discuss wikimedia related issues. Even if it's not a big problem to use personal email there, lot of people, especially administrators do not want to uncover their personal email.
On way easy way is to set up another email address on your favourite mail provider. I have been using hashar for years to remain somehow undercover.
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org