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In article <000501c0731a$30d78af0$2101a8c0@ksws2000>, Graham Smith <[log in to unmask]> writes >Perhaps one solution may be to adopt role-based identities? > >There was an excellent paper on this subject in a recent ACM journal that >you may wish to read: unfortunately I cannot lay my hands on it at this >moment. It's an age old problem. Remembering we are talking about school children here, the concept of roles is a rather difficult one. Yes, there will occasionally be the "Captain of Hockey" and even the "Swot from Form 5b"; but most of the time they really are just a bunch of individual children. >There are at least two specific problems with using given names as the basis >for corporate email addresses: > >1. Duplication > - What happens when the second "graham-smith@x" turns up? Cambridge University (and indeed Freeserve) would add a number after his name. > - Even worse, what happens when the first "graham-smith@x" leaves and a >helpful administrator aliases the now redundant account to the remaining >person of that name? That's a quite different, admin procedure problem. >2. Tracing Individuals > - If I suspected that Roland Perry (sorry, rpap, I was just stuck for an >unusual name to use for this example) is a secret agent, will my suspicions >be confirmed if email addressed to [log in to unmask] doesn't bounce? In fact, you could easily set up MI5's email system to both bounce *and* deliver all their email. However, this business of guessing email addresses can just work for unusual combinations. You'd probably have to try rperry and rolandp and a few other ones as well. >Both of these problems might be solved by using role-based email addresses, >and aliasing these to the user's logon id. Yes, that's a very good idea, and one I always encourage, when the situation is right. But it doesn't seem to me to be right for schoolchildren. >The use of role-based email >addresses may also have the beneficial side-effect of discouraging personal >use of corporate email facilities... I'm not sure why you want to discourage that. Do you paint out the office windows to discourage people using corporate light frequencies ;-) -- Roland Perry