Help talk:E-mail

email functionality
(imported from WikiIndex talk:Community portal/Archive 3)
 * Regarding the 8+ years, what about the email functionality? Did You get it to work? If any functionality is more community relevant than that, which would it be? Manorainjan (talk) 14:03, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Special:RecentChanges is the most important community tool for wiki, when the community grows very large, related changes off of category pages becomes useful. MarkDilley


 * I see what You mean. It is on WikiIndex that I learned to watch the RC closely. But I do not see it as more important than email. Practically it is, if the email does not work. But I do not intend to become a RC-junkie. I regard RC as something mainly for sysops, for those who have to have a watch over others. RC is what You get with the installation, it's most basic functionality. The other community relevant functionalities needs to be build and cared for, like this page. When RC becomes the place where everything seams to happen, it is, because nobody cared to build a better place. RC is a primitive, a fall back. In order to build a good quality of community one needs to design complex higher functions. When people poke their noses in my sandbox because they are watching my every little step on RC I got to think: "don't they have better things to do?" I once asked Sean if sandbox-edits can be excluded from RC and he denied that. So, if technically this is not possible than it should be excluded by means of policy in order to create more privacy.

And there comes email in play: Privacy! You can not have community without privacy. You don't want every bit of talk with another member of Your community to be overheared by all and everybody. This causes tensions of many kinds. So one better not rivals one community feature with another. The more community supporting features one has, the better for the community and its complexity. Manorainjan (talk) 10:34, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Getting the email function to work for all
(imported from Category talk:Active administrators of this wiki)
 * AFAIK Mark said, that eMail works for some accounts.
 * Also a clean install of the latest stable version was done without result in this matter.

Therefore I conclude, that this old issue will have to be solved on another level. I assume that technically the installation is OK and works fine. But most likely the Mails from WikiIndex are getting hold up on their journey over the net on account of some blacklisting. That is, what is to be tested for at this moment.

For this task one obviously needs Check user ability which Mark got recently but is reluctant to make use of. This is the point where the progress of this task stopped.

Now, what will happen next? Manorainjan (talk) 19:14, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Will Mark overcome his aversion
 * Or will some other checkuser take over?

I have no idea how to use Check user. If you point me in a direction that tells the basics, I could start on something. MarkDilley


 * email 10-20 active users, ask them to register their email address if not yet done and create a list of account names, mail addresses and whether thy got or not the mails. Possibly it will show some hint like which mail servers get and which not. Since You should not ask the users to paste You their email adresses on Your talk page, You need to use checkuser to read them out on your own. Your result list could be public without the alias part of the address, just server. Manorainjan (talk) 02:13, 9 September 2014 (UTC)


 * sorry to not be clear. I do not know how to use Check user. MarkDilley

After reading this I believe, this is not what You need. Manorainjan (talk) 02:38, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Once more: The very next step is to find 10-20 users who have email configured. And this users should be 'active'. For getting this list of users together You need to find out who got their email configured. Checkuser seams to be not this function. Possibly You got this 'ability' even before. Anf If You can not find enough active users who configured email, You got to ask some to do it now. Manorainjan 02:44, 9 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Hmm. I've seen a pattern of email addresses that failed to receive emails. (@CUs&Shells: Look at their host.) But what causes the errors could only be seen in the logs of the server (if any). I doubt CUs have access to that. --YiFei | talk 13:23, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Where do You keep the table with results? Manorainjan (talk) 11:00, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Nowhere but in the database. It shouldn't be public data. --YiFei | talk 02:03, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

As I explained it several times, the table does not need to contain the alias part of the email addresses. The relevant part is the domain. And that is public anyway. There is no harm in publishing it.

Table of results
* server of sender of verification mail.

The cumulated date is here: Help:E-mail verification. -- Manorainjan (talk) 11:53, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Possible next steps: Mark would like to change the current senders address to something like notifications@wikiindex.org if he knew how to do such change in configuration.
 * ...wouldn't it be better to collect only unique email server parts? Then the table (and also the evaluation work) could be shrunk --Wolf | talk 13:55, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

If You are thinking to omit the user part: That is to see whom one does not need to ask any more. Manorainjan (talk) 22 September 2014

Have been asked to add to table of results above, but latest "WikiIndex email" received back in 2013. Can someone Special:EmailUser/EarthFurst on me? (I continue to get "WikiIndex page {example page} has been changed" emails.) --EarthFurst (talk) 19:04, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, done so. By now I never came across a case where one of the following three cases of mails worked but the other not:

Only difference was, that Notification mail landed in SPAM, PM not. So, If anyone has observed such a difference, please tell. Manorainjan (talk) 19:24, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Verification mail
 * Notification mail
 * PM 'Email this user'


 * Via Email this user, Manorainjan asked I ever have problems with verification process or know of "email providers which did not receive this verification mails?" Fairly sure I had no problem with verification process. Haven't heard of any email providers not receiving verification emails. --EarthFurst (talk) 20:01, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Case closed :-)
With Emufarmers help we got that problem solved. All adresses which we knew that they failed, are working now. Manorainjan (talk) 18:26, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
 * is now the senders address. (no Idea what happens if I send to it ;-)