Subject: RE: Multiple E-mail Addresses for IETF Participants

From: "Lee, Michael" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 11:04:39 -0400

Hi Bob,

The secretariat has been storing IETF participants contact information
in the IETF database, and we call the internal application that handles
those contact information, "IETF Rolodex."
We use the IETF Rolodex to display contact information (mainly email
addresses) among IETF Web pages and tools, such as IETF WG charters or
Internet-Draft Database Interface.
We update the participants contact information using the IETF Rolodex
based on their I-D submissions and direct request through
[email-masked].

The IETF mailing lists are being maintained by a separate system and we
don't use them when we need people's contact information to put into the
IETF Web pages.

I can tell that the IETF Rolodex is not a new system - it's been in IETF
system internally around 10 years.

I hope that this message helped you to understand the role of IETF
Rolodex.

Best Regards,
Michael Lee,
IETF Secretariat.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Hinden [mailto:[email-masked]]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 4:22 PM
> To: Fuller, Barbara
> Cc: [email-masked]; Ray Pelletier; Brian E Carpenter; Lindberg,
Jon;
> Lee, Michael
> Subject: Re: Multiple E-mail Addresses for IETF Participants
> 
> Barbara,
> 
> On Aug 28, 2006, at 6:49 AM, ext Fuller, Barbara wrote:
> 
> > Dear IETF Working Group Chairs:
> >
> > While most IETF participants use one e-mail address for all of their
> > IETF-related activities, several that we know of use multiple e-mail
> > addresses.  For example, they might use one e-mail address for
> > submitting Internet-Drafts, and another e-mail address for
subscribing
> > to the IETF Announcement List.
> 
> I use several email addresses for a variety of reason.
> 
> > The current model in our system is: "one e-mail address per
> > participant."  As a result, if someone submits an Internet-Draft,
and
> > his or her e-mail address is different from the address listed in
our
> > Rolodex, then we update the Rolodex with the latest address.
> 
> This must be a new system because it didn't used to be that way.
> 
> Could you explain why there is an "IETF Rolodex" in the first place?
> I don't understand why the secretariat needs to be doing this.
> People should be able to subscribe to email lists, register for
> meetings, take on a IETF role, etc. with whatever address they want.
> Why does the IETF need to correlate these email addresses?
> 
> For example, I can be a w.g. chair with one address, subscribe to my
> working group mailing list with two different addresses, and
> subscribe to the IETF list with a third address.  I don't see any
> reason why this needs to be correlated?
> 
> Thanks,
> Bob
>

---

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 12:16:21 -0700

>Internet-Draft Database Interface.

Good to know. Given the previous comments on this thread from WG 
chairs, conflating addresses used for just those two functions in not 
a good thing for many of us.

Where else does the Rolodex get used?

>based on their I-D submissions and direct request through

Please don't do this. Many WG chairs post I-Ds from addresses 
different than the ones that they want listed on the charter pages.

>don't use them when we need people's contact information to put into the

This is good to hear.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium

---

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 09:27:11 -0700

Michael,

> based on their I-D submissions and direct request through

Thanks for the explanation.  I think the problem you are running into  
is the:

   "We update the participants contact information using the IETF  
Rolodex based on their I-D submission"

Any heuristic used to automatically determine what is the  
participants main email address based on I-D submissions is going to  
be problematic.  I think a better approach is to put this in the  
control of the participant, like a mailing list.  Then this is the  
email address you can use to contact a participant.  But don't assume  
that because someone submits an ID with a different email address  
that they want their address on IETF web pages to change.

> system internally around 10 years.

Was the updating based on ID submissions or mailing list  
subscriptions a more recent addition?

Thanks,
Bob

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 14:16:54 -0700

>  based on their I-D submissions and direct request through

Does "I-D submissions" mean the address within the I-D, or the 
address used to send the I-D in for publication?  I assume the 
latter, but the former may be closer to what people want/expect.

Like many others, I have a general IETF address that I use within an 
I-D and that was listed in the charter page for the group I co-chair. 
I wondered why I started getting general IETF mail at my non-IETF 
address, and this thread explains it: sometimes I accidently send in 
I-Ds using my non-IETF address as the From address, even though the 
IETF-specific one is listed inside the I-D.

For mailing lists, I generally subscribe using every address I might 
ever post from (accidently or on purpose), and set the "nomail" 
option on all but one of them.

---

From: Randall Gellens <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 14:16:54 -0700