Deciding on namespace issues will probably be the hardest part of our
task, so I'd like to get some ideas out there to see how hard it's going
to be to come to consensus.
There are a few namespace-related issues we discussed in our first meeting.
They are:
* What is the namespace going to be? firstname_lastname is obvious, but has
some non-trivial problems with conflicts. (lucia_tsai, for one). There
are other auto-generated options (th492, for example). Self-selection
is attractive to users, but possibly a headache to administer and police
(can someone select chancellor_berdahl@Berkeley.EDU?) There could be
LDAP database attributes for more than one address (maybe auto-generate
th492, but allow users to change it).
* Do we care about the uclink/socrates namespace? The continuum extends
from using uclink account names exclusively, to completely ignoring them.
In between, possibly we could reserve the name space if a uclink user has
it. Mike notes that someone who has jones@cchem might question why
jones@uclink gets preference. Maybe free-for-all is fairer.
* How do we handle the transition to the Online Alumni Community? Do we
forward mail from @Berkeley.EDU to @calalum.Berkeley.EDU? Do we just move
the name over and stop services to the old name after some grace period?
We could change the name to firstname_lastname_2001 or some such. What
about students who don't graduate?
My thoughts on these three questions:
The main advantage of tom_holub@Berkeley.EDU is its obviousness; you'd
always know someone's e-mail address. Except for conflicts. Unfortunately,
I think the conflict issue makes this scheme unattractive, because I can't
think of an aesthetic way to handle conflicts. (Suggestions are welcome).
There will probably be enough conflicts to cause noticable problems. The
presence of CalNet and the online directory also makes obviousness less
important--we can find people's e-mail addresses pretty easily.
Initials plus a serial number (TH1@Berkeley.EDU) has one major
advantage over firstname_lastname, which is that it's equally unaesthetic
for everyone. It also doesn't build in an assumption about what
someone's address will be; you'd always have to look someone up to
be sure you got the right person. That can be looked at as a disadvantage,
but it's also an advantage because you will have fewer sender errors
(sending mail to the wrong person because of a name conflict).
The ugliness of TH1@Berkeley.EDU has one significant downside, which is
that people won't want to continue using it. If transferring the
namespace into the Online Alumni Community is desirable, we want the
addresses to be addresses alumni would want to use after they've left
the campus. I can't see TH1_2001@Berkeley.EDU being something I'd
want to stick with.
Allowing people to choose their own address will obviously be the most
aesthetic, but it has two major problems: people might sign up for
inappropriate or misleading names (chancellor_berdahl@Berkeley.EDU), and,
more importantly in my opinion, not everyone would have an @Berkeley.EDU
address. They'd have to opt-in and make a choice.
I'm not worried about the inappropriate/misleading name issue. People
can choose their names on uclink, and it's not a significant problem.
We'd have to have a policy, and a way to deal with complaints, but
neither of those should be that difficult.
So, the way I'm leaning at this point is to auto-generate TH1@Berkeley.EDU
addresses for everyone who has an e-mail address in the campus directory,
and then allow people to choose their own address if they'd prefer a
different one. Choosing over the Web would have to be a once-only thing; we
wouldn't want people changing all the time (that was the problem with the
chlogin program on old uclink). After the first change, they'd have to
request something through a human (maybe User & Account Services).
uclink/socrates name space: My opinion is, we ignore it. The whole point
(well, much of the point) is to get a clean name space.
Online Alumni Community transition: I do like the idea of
"previousaddress_2001@alumni.Berkeley.EDU". A general principle I think
we should adopt is that we will reserve namespace only while we're
providing services. So when a student graduates, he moves to
@alumni.berkeley.edu, and we have some sort of policy for mail forwarding
from @Berkeley.EDU--either we keep forwarding forever, or we forward
for a set period of time and then stop, or we forward for a set period of
time, then start forwarding with a "please update your address book"
bounce message, then stop. In any case, when the @Berkeley.EDU is no
longer receiving any services (if you mail it, you get a "user unknown"
bounce message), the name space should be freed up.
So, those are my thoughts. I'd like to hear other opinions, either
through mail, or at our Tuesday meeting.
-- Tom Holub (tom_holub@LS.Berkeley.EDU, 510-642-9069) College of Letters & Science 249 Campbell Hall
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Nov 08 2001 - 17:54:24 PST