Webmail

[kgunn]

Ive been wondering this for ages: Why is it that Caithness.Org users cant have webmail email addresses? I just cant see why! :confused:

[Bobinovich]

Many forum spammers use webmail accounts in order to register and post junk adverts. This is one simple way to ensure it is kept to a minimum.

There may be additional reasons but this is the first which came to my head.

[EDDIE]

kgunn@caithness.org that would be quite a cool different email address and would be good adverisement for caithness.org when people are sending emails it is a good idea but i think bill is the only one that can awnser this question

[Niall Fernie]

On the subject of webmail, Bob is correct that spammers use webmail accounts but so do people who wish to create sock puppet accounts. I know that this is possible on some ISPs but ISP accounts are far easier to trace should legal action be required for any reason.

As for anyone @ caithness.org accounts being available, this will never happen simply because there is no support to go with it. Having experienced e-mail support for some of our early hosting customers I would never change my mind. A great number of people cannot seperate various internet services and who they get them from. Many are used to getting everything from the same company so when one service fails they always phone the same support line. I've had calls from people with no internet connection telling me that our server is broken because they cannot check their e-mail. I've also had to deal with someone who claimed initially that their e-mail service was broken as they had not received any mail, it took me about 20 minutes to convince them that they did not receive any e-mail as no one had sent them any :roll: .

Why tech support people don't all go phsyco after 6 months is beyond me. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FE_p5N89XQI

[Bill Fernie]

We did consider giving caithness.org email addresses to users of the web site a long time ago. We rejected it because although it all looks easy there is work associated with providing email addresses. Unless we could charge reasonable amount we did not think any of us had the time to provide a reasonable service. Niall would have had to set up the email addresses and if there were many then time would become a problem. We already know that email addresses create eenquiries from our small number of other web sites where we do provide this service along with domain names. They generate enquiries out of all proportion to the money we charge for the service. We get enquires if the email is not working and sometimes this is not related to our service but some aother problem with the computer, with the ISP and so on. Nothing to do with us but we still have to handle a telephone call. These enquiries relate to a relatively small number of accounts. We thought that if we had large numbers of users we might not be able to handle the calls or complaints each time the service did not work or some other enquiry related to email.

There are other reasons we did not do it such as email would generate traffic through our server which as some of you already are aware is under severe strain in recent times. the company that hosts our web sites tell us that Caithness.org sits on a srver with about 3000 other web sites. Caithness.org already generates more traffic than all the rest put together. Adding email from hundreds of people would add to the problem.