RE: Organisation filtering RE: [Nms-cgi-devel] Anyone...Anyone...?

[Simon W. <es...@ou...>]

On Thu, 13 Feb 2003, Wizard wrote:

> > I just think that is going to be nigh on impossible to test and/or
> > document it so that it makes sense to our users, that frankly struggle (in
> > some instances) with *very* *simple* configurations in FormMail and so on.
> 
> I agree to some extent (for either of our implementations). What I was
> suggesting was simply a warning that, because of the complexities in email
> address hierarchy, that the system may not always work as expected. I
> suspect that there will be questions such as "x@x.x.x is being filtered and
> they shouldn't be" and we'd have to tell them what to do to fix it.

Which is why I suggested splitting the configuration/processing so that it 
is easier to understand and predict the outcome of the process.

Given the ammount of effort going into supporting (Form|TF)Mail I don't 
think we should be creating anything that is likely to add to that burden.

> > I'm sorry that I've failed to convince you of the dangers I see in this
> > approach and the risk that we will create something that is almost
> > impossible to test and that will produce unpredictable results, at least
> > for the class of users we expect to use it.
> 
> You haven't necessarily failed. I think I understand the dangers, but
> believe that they could be less severe than you suggest. The option is to
> not include it at all, which would be all right with me. I just felt that is
> was worth a shot to see what sort of feedback it offers from users. I don't
> believe that we are doing anything that is inherently 'broken', just limited
> in its scope.

Well, I have failed or we wouldn't be having this discussion :)
 
> > Go for what you think is best and when it's ready we'll test it.
> 
> I'll include what I have, and perhaps we'll get some more feedback once
> people start setting it up. Worse case scenario, we yank it back out, or
> offer it as an unsupported add-in.

Be wary of this approach. If we pull it because users are strugging, the
project will get a bad reputation from the start both from those that 
couldn't get on with it and those who actually liked it and felt cheated 
when we take it out. Not good.
 
> > Am I barking up the wrong tree entirely ?
> 
> No, as far as I can tell, you're concerns are valid. I just felt that it
> would be better to attempt to offer something in response to the request,
> rather than offer nothing.

Playing devils advocate for a moment, can you actually point to an email 
that requests an allow/deny mechanism based on the organisation of the 
domain and independent of the hierarchy, e.g. aol.co.uk and aol.com *in 
one filter* ?

Simon.