All, most especially current students,

There's a fairly healthy debate going on in the campus "nag" ("Network Administrator's Group") and "tltr" (the "Teaching and Learning with Technology Roundtable") mailing lists regarding the business and IT policies of how you should receive correspondence in email - whether at your campus email account or a personal account you use. Both of those lists are public subscription (the nag list focuses on IT and IT support issues - the TLTR list focuses on pedogogical issues with technology) - the tltr in particular encourages thoughtful student involvement.

The current discussion is here:

http://lists.ncsu.edu/cgi-bin/digest?list=nag&archive=nag.200508&Submit=Show+Archive

and here:

http://lists.ncsu.edu/cgi-bin/digest?list=tltr&archive=tltr.200508&Submit=Show+Archive

8/17/2005 5:20:27 PM

i realize NAG is an acronym, but you really should come up with a better acronym or a better name to make an acronym for.

8/17/2005 5:38:57 PM

The list name has a long and somewhat sordid history and has stood for more than one acronym expansion in the last 5 years or so and the list has been on at least three different serving systems in the last 8 years. I seriously doubt it's going to change.

Considering some of the traffic and topics, the acronym sometimes is rather appropriate.

8/17/2005 5:46:42 PM

I just read the NAG archives, but here's a summary:
In past years, Reg. & Records has been overwriting your default address to your Unity e-mail upon registration. This year, this didn't happen - whatever address you registered with was your default in R&R (and hence, the default subscribed to your class mailing lists, etc.).

So now they're debating which is better to set as policy.

Unity Address Points (from archives):

• I know many a faculty member who will ignore email from places like yahoo, hotmail, and gmail because they automatically assume it is spam. This results in students who use emails by those providers to run the risk of being ignored.
  
• We encourage students to use their NCSU email address when talking about school related matters, emailing professors, or for use on a resume. People see yahoo or some other provider and are wary. Plus, students don't choose the most identifiable email addresses (ie hotchick79@yahoo.com).
  
• Many universities like UNCW and UNC Chapel Hill are now requiring a similar University-only email for students (and staff and faculty I think).
  

• In E115, we encourage students to maintain more than one email. (on a personal level, I think this is really stupid)
  
• FYI this year all but 00.59% of incoming Freshmen provided an email address on their application (88% applied online)
  

• Obviously the two defaults are above.
  
• I think the best approach to this email problem would be to have the students put a forward on their Unity email address in addition to ( or in place of ) updating their preferred email address. We (Registration and Records) tend to get a multitude of calls from students each year, that aren't receiving emails from their professors ( going through Wolfware and or Webassign ). Along with that, I don't believe these students are receiving the broadcast emails ( crime alerts etc. ) unless they are checking their Unity email as well.
  
• It would be easy to just have the unityID in class rosters instead of the student's preferred email address and leaving it up to student/teacher to enact their own policy on emails.
  
• It is not a done deal that the University will continue to offer email accounts forever. It is more likely the case that incoming freshmen, DE students, continuing Ed students will already have an email address, and may in fact prefer to use that address. Email accounts with the university may become purely opt-in, or may be done away with completely.
  

8/17/2005 8:08:03 PM

Quote :

"I think checking multiple e-mail accounts is stupid though and I would never do it."

I have 9 total, 6 I check on a regular basis. I tend to be a bit obsessive on sorting things though. When you have a client checking all accounts at once its not any trouble. multiples just makes sense for minimalizing spam and so forth.

8/17/2005 8:18:28 PM

I have multiple accounts forwarded to one account.

I have Outlook set up to handle different names and from e-mail addresses (even though it's going through the same server, you can spoof the from address and name). I have my own installation of SquirrelMail set up with identities and other plug-ins for on-the-road checking. But ultimately on the road or at home using Outlook, I only have to check in one place for all my e-mail. I'd go apeshit if I had to spend 30 minutes checking e-mail every day - I'd rather use my time replying to the messages rather than going to check for them.

8/17/2005 8:38:12 PM

i have a work account (though three different addresses get forwarded to it, each for a different category of clientele) and a personal account (@alumni.ncsu.edu gets forwarded to my personal domain space)

8/17/2005 9:55:14 PM

bttt for discussion

8/18/2005 3:18:23 AM

I have a hotmail acount, It exist jsut for spam.
I have yahoomail, It was my first email adress back in the day
I have Gmail(multiple), both personal, buisness, and off site storage acounts.
I have the email acounts for my website
Hotmail NEVER gets checked
Yahoo gets checked a few times a year
gmail/jerimiahscc.com go to outlook every day or so

I also use a pile of redirect only adresses that bounce to folders in gmail.

Multiple adresses are not bad.
And an idea might be, rather than keeping the default, maybe set up unity mail to auto forward to the default adress they provide.

Thus if they never use unity, they still get the mail. And If they use unity, the mail is still there on the server, wonderfull IMAP.
PLUS they can get the mail no matter WHAT email they check.

8/18/2005 3:29:19 AM

I use the multiple addresses concept with a catch-all on my domain I suppose.

I sort of stole the idea from SpamGourmet, so when I sign up for something (e.g. TWW), I use an e-mail address like:
tww.dfshadow@domain.tld

my main e-mail to give to people would be like dfshadow@domain.tld

if they did that sort of a catch system for your unity account, that would be a badass service to offer. makes it easy to filter using headers.

Now that I think about it, having SpamAssassin on the server and spam box enabled really helps filter the spam so that would be another feature that NCSU could use to get people to switch over. Spam box puts everything marked as spam in a seperate folder which I can still POP/IMAP to so that anything mistakenly marked can still be saved.

[Edited on August 18, 2005 at 3:35 AM. Reason : spam]

8/18/2005 3:32:13 AM

http://www.ncsu.edu/it/essentials/email_messaging/pure_message/

8/18/2005 10:33:39 AM

I really like how with G-mail abstein2@ abstein.2@ and ab.stein2@ abstein2+tww@ all go to the same mailbox.

Really easy to only have one e-mail and filter spam.

8/18/2005 10:51:42 AM

hmm, I didn't know GMail did that.

cool

8/18/2005 5:09:03 PM

I have already seen problems where new students have given the wrong email address. Just today I was trying to help someone and when I went to email them I got the mail bounced back. Hooray! I think that everyone should use a unity email for anything school related. There are great benefits to having gmail or other services and it is convenient only having one email, but being a responsible student isn't about convenience.

8/18/2005 5:17:16 PM

lmfao that's the stupidest thing i've ever heard.

THINK OF THE FUCKING END USER
KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID

there are tons of principles like this. IT's job is not to complicate things for students. it's to make things as simple as possible.

8/18/2005 5:28:55 PM

Where exactly was IT involved? He said the student gave the university a bad address. How is that IT's fault? Or how is IT supposed to make it simpler to avoid that problem?

8/18/2005 5:36:23 PM

no i just mean in general, the people who are deciding this right now are not supposed to choose the most complicated option just because "students lives aren't meant to be easy" - i've collectively referred to all of them as IT.

8/18/2005 5:39:18 PM

Quote :

"Or how is IT supposed to make it simpler to avoid that problem?"

make everyone's default email a unity email, then everyone's email is known to be good at the beginning, and if they change it from that and it breaks, then it is their own fault.

i personally used school mail for school functions. at the end, i was getting shit loads of spam and it's because of robots picking addresses off of the directory. I would hate to have my personal email address listed publicly on the directory and then end up with all that spam and still have to deal with it after i leave NC State

i support the idea that if you want to receive the email elsewhere, set up a forward, but don't require your teachers to get your personal email and get it right when they can easily just email your username which is known through the system. at that point, it is on you to correctly set up the forward or to read your unity mail through webmail.

8/18/2005 5:43:40 PM

send stuff to the address people give the university, thats where they are expecting it

8/18/2005 5:51:59 PM

Why is this even a question?

When I got hired on at a company, they gave me a company email and said "All work related emails are sent to and received here."

Same concept for school. All school-related emails leave & receive at the Unity account.

8/19/2005 11:02:16 AM