Email abstraction layer

Lorenzo Cappelletti lorenzo.cappelletti@email.it
Sat, 31 May 2003 14:49:36 +0200


Hi everybody,

it came to my mind that we should add an email abstraction layer between
users and developers.

In other words, I'd like that our mirror partners could write to
mirroring@ or mirror@ and get the right person who's responsible for
that service at that moment.  (Just, imagine that each `@' is followed
by the `gnupg.org' domain name.  Precaution anti spamming. Sigh!)

The same would be necessary for translators.  Hence, a Spanish guy can 
write to the Spanish translator (i.e., Noel) by writing to something 
like translator-es@.


The other side of the coin is that doing this way our work gets
anonymized.  I don't like this for at least two reasons.  First, we're
volunteers and we get payed because our work is prized or at least
recognised.  Second, users feel more confortable when they interact with
a human being and not a cold webmaster@ address.

Because of that, I'd like that we replied to users by adding our name,
i.e., not a poor `transltor-it@', but a warmer `Cristian Rigamonti
<translator-it@>' reply address.  This already happens for Werner and me
when someone writes to webmaster@.

Moreover, the reply should also be Bcc'ed to the same address 
(translator-it@ in the example above) so that other people can read the 
answer.  In fact, it may happen that more than one volunteer is assigned 
an abstracted address (see below).

Messages should also be gpg signed.  We're contributing to GnuPG.org 
site, aren't we? ;-)


Last but not least, the right place to implement all this is the mail 
server.  Gnats has got an alias mechanism, but we risk to disperse the 
information.  MTA is the right place.


This said, I'd like to hear from Werner weather he can define the
following aliases.  First address represents the responsible for that 
service.  Other addresses are people that may have something to do/say.

For example, a mirror admin can write to mirror-admin@ because there's a
problem with the server (Werner's job) or because their mirror update
frequency has changed (my job).

  # Admins
  admin@             -> wk
  web-admin@         -> admin, web-master
  ftp-admin@         -> admin, web-master
  rsync-admin@       -> admin, web-master
  mirror-admin@      -> admin, web-master
  gnats-admin        -> "| queue-pr -q", admin
  gnats-admin.gpgweb -> "| queue-pr -q -d gpgweb", web-master

  # Authors
  web-master@        -> lolo, admin

  # Historically more common
  webmaster@         -> web-master
  ftpmaster@         -> ftp-admin

  # Translators
  translator-de@     -> wk's brother, web-master
  translator-es@     -> ndtt, web-master
  translator-it@     -> cri, web-master

  # Others
  faqs@              -> schibner, web-master

Of course, other useful aliases are welcome.

As you may have noticed, I use a hypen between service and admin (as in
web-admin) in order to have a congruent scheme.  In fact, gnats uses
gnats-admin and mirroradmin would be difficult to read.  But we can 
change this to the opposite and have webadmin, webmaster, rsyncadmin, 
gnatsadmin, gnatsadmin.gpgweb, translator.xx, etc.  We just have to make 
a decision.


-- 
email: lorenzo.cappelletti@email.it
Jabber: lolo@linux.it
Fingerprint: 8CDD 3408 53B2 6122 99DA EE37 1523 68FC D906 4C08

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