[horde] [imp] default reply behavior in dimp/imp

D G Teed donald.teed at gmail.com
Tue Sep 6 19:33:56 UTC 2011


2011/9/6 Vilius Šumskas <vilius at lnk.lt>:
> Sveiki,
> It's  not  like  someone  got  jailed  because  of this. It's a simple
> mistake.  Sometimes it could be embarassing. But really it's the fault
> of   the   user  which  really doesn't read anything. Similar mistakes
> can be made not reading other messages in the interface.
>
> And   if   you   are   working  with  multibilion  dollar  deals or if
> someone's  life  is  at stake, you really should re-read everything in
> the email 10 times (including recipients) before you send it.

How do you know no one will go to jail because of this?
Where do you get the audacity to state this?
Recent problems with SSL certificates have likely caused
people in Iran to go to jail or possibly be killed by their government.
You cannot foretell the degree of trouble that will arise from
an unresolved problem.

Google "reply to all horror stories" and perhaps you will learn something
about what has actually happened from Reply All.  It can
only be worse when people don't actually choose Reply All.

For certain, people have lost jobs, lost promotions, lost friends,
and so on due to Reply to All in other email clients.

For us, email is an institutional and official channel of communicating,
and as such we expect more control on the system level
than what you'd find in something like Facebook.

You cannot say it isn't important, and you cannot assume
people will always check every detail. In my jurisdiction it
is unlawful for government employees to not protect
privacy of individuals, and this is in effect on the Universities
as well.  If confidential information was accidentally sent to
students, it could lead to legal problems.  For all I know,
I could be legally responsible for deploying software
which aids loss of confidentiality.

I cannot deploy a webmail interface which knowingly
increases the risk of inadvertent Reply All.  You cannot
convince me otherwise.  It has nothing to do with what I
understand about the interface, because I cannot control
the users.  The users have already demonstrated the
current interface failed them (within one week of use,
and unheard of in the past 6+ years of our using horde).
This is not theory. This is real.

The only way I can return to using dimp is if we get
two buttons again for reply and reply to all.  Only then
can I say we have done everything possible to prevent
accidents and protect privacy on a systems level.

I have checked other Universities running horde and
everyone I visited was running Horde 3/IMP 4.
I suspect there has not been much feedback
on horde 4 from real world users at large user bases.


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