[Wikipedia-l] RE: "Email this user" function and @wikipedia.com email accounts

[Daniel Mayer]

This may be a duplicate, so please disregard if this
if the case.

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 at wikipedia.com
(maveric149 at wikipedia.org would be even better) than
have to pay the same amount for maveric149 at yahoo.com. 
       

--maveric149

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