Electronic Communications Coordinator

Report and Discussion Items

Dave Green, d.green@ieee.org

Report

E-Mail Aliases Mailing Lists (majordomo lists) SPAM

Newsgroups (r3-collab.eng.uab.edu) Electronic Conferencing Entity Web Hosting (EWH)

E-Mail Aliases

IEEE service (http://www.ieee.org/eleccomm) Requires a web account (as more and more

things do) Member benefit Volunteer leaders should have one Are a 'redirect', you point it at your real mailbox Attachments are scanned for viruses

Mailing Lists

Presently implemented by the programs called majordomo and majorcool

Another service (http://www.ieee.org/eleccomm)

Takes a bit of effort to maintain Can request on-line and can be maintained

by web access or by e-mail commands Strategic and risky

Web-based tool for managing majordomo lists Installed at IEEE Accessible through (

http://www.ieee.org/eleccomm)

Mailing List Issues

How people are added to list and how they come off? (Opt-in, Opt-Out, temporary)

Who can send to the list? What happens when a person hits 'reply'?

Reply to individual Reply to group

Is the list moderated (a human reads the post before the group sees it)?

SPAM

AKA UCE - Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail Cost to send: Low

Thus senders are encouraged to send to many folks even though 'hit ' rate is low

Programs exist to 'mine' e-mail addresses from the web and newsgroups

Costly to track down spam sender and have them cease and desist. They mainly just change a bit and keep on spamming.

What can you do about SPAM?

User Ignore it, hit the delete key quickly Use your e-mail program's filtering to remove it Complain to the ISP of the SPAMer Use services like spamcop.net which add

additional filtering rules Only read mail from people you know

What can you do about SPAM?

List Owner Use moderated lists Only allow list members to post to the group

Must build list with the addresses they use Only allow certain people to post to the list

More at end of report regarding the IEEE volunteer structure lists

Newsgroups

Asynchronous communciations like mail but... Provides threading Provides ability to 'catch up' on topic you join late Provides ability to compartmentalize Provides archival

Region 3 has r3-collab.eng.uab.edu server Presently about 15 newsgroups IEEE HQ is bringing up a similar capability

Newsgroups

Contact: d.green@ieee.org Newsreader interface

Outlook Express, Netscape, Gravity, gnus Web interface E-Conference Training will speak about the

methodologies to make these work for you. http://ewh.ieee.org/e-conf includes a link to a

status page to let you know of outages

E-Conferencing

Text -based chatting using IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

irc.ieee.org - IEEE server MS Chat, Mirc32, X-Chat, ... are clients http://ewh.ieee.org/reg/3/e-conf has

guidelines (discussed in training) and client configurations

Maintained by IEEE HQ (started in R3) Just Do It (no scheduling necessary)

Entity Web Hosting

An IEEE service for entities (like sections) to have a base level web service

Low IEEE staff/volunteer effort available to help

Community of experienced users (like ChipD)

http://ewh.ieee.org - about 250 entities on it Tool sets are chosen based on wide

applicability and the ability to use without support or risk to other users

EWH Issues

Can't have own IP nor own domain Adverstising URLs http://www.ieee.org/phrase

IS available. Can't do credit cards

IEEE Conference Services has such a service, there may discounts offered to sections in future.

Automation limited Limited resource to ensure security, integrity and

robustness. Some approaches under investigation.

Actions

Obtain personal IEEE alias and use it Review mailing list use for proper balance

between SPAM and usability Consider starting a newsgroup for group

discussions, an educational activity, or ??? Consider participating in IRC chats on topics

of interest at the section/area/council/region level.

Consider use of EWH system.

Possible IEEE Responses to SPAM

Smart 'posters' logic @ieee.org required poster's file with 1st time extra effort for non-list

members Filtering on sender, message headers, or

message content Actively complaining about SPAM. Laws? Usability may suffer! We must act because we need e-mail