[NCUC E-team] E-mail

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 12:28:03PM -0500, Brenden Kuerbis (bkuerbis at internetgovernance.org) wrote:

> > Do we need actual mailboxes or just (forwarding) addresses?

> If they're forwarding addresses, are the emails still archived somewhere
> accessible by other authorized individuals?  We just don't want to end up
> in a situation where administrative emails (e.g., info, membership
> application requests) are only archived on someone's personal machine.

That can happen in either case. Even if it is a mailbox at Gandi,
whoever reads it can also delete the message accidentally (that is
very easy to do).

For addresses that we want to be properly archived and accessible
by multiple people, I would suggest creating mailing lists with
appropriate aliases, with distribution to just one person (or two
or as many as desired) and posting rights to the world.
They would not be publicized as mailing lists, of course,
but simply as contact addresses - that they'd be lists
internally would not be apparent to outsiders, and the
person handling them would not need to worry about it either,
messages would be forwarded to their personal mailboxes -
the only obvious functional difference would be archival.

Creating the lists is of course an extra step, but it's
not hard, and I don't expect we'll have hundreds
of aliases like this.

In some cases it might even be appropriate to use some kind
of request tracker type ticketing system, but as long as
the amount of traffic remains low as I expect it to be,
that probably won't be worth the trouble.
(If we end up using Redmine it comes with such a feature,
then we could use it. But for now I think Mailman is enough.)

A mailbox at Gandi might be suitable in some situations where
an address is handled by multiple people, but it is not
suitable or at least not ideal for archival purposes.

On the other hand if we choose to create personal @ncuc.org
addresses, as in tapani.tarvainen at ncuc.org, simple aliases
would presumably be appropriate, but I don't know if there's
any need for such.

But, what addresses do we want - do we have a list already?

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen