I thought about something when I was asleap last night. would it be possible to create a pop3 email client email address for members of ATS?

Perhaps members could pay points for a member@abovetopsecret.com email addy?

Personaly I think it would be pretty cool. Although I don't know about the logistics of doing so. I personaly would love to see whatukno@abovetopsecret.com as an email addy.

Just a question...

'I thought about something when I was asleep lastnight'.

Dude you rock!

Very cute.

Seriously though, I give the idea a

this would be a great idea, yes I think there will be an extra burden on mainly hardware and bandwidth, but I think it will get more potential users as well

I second that

It is a great idea, no doubt. I mean, how cool would that be?
However, i do think that seeing as this is a free site, expecting the owners to fork out for money so that every member could have an email address, is a bit too much to ask.
I already have no idea how they afford to run it, because the member list is huge, not to mention the visitors they get. Adding emails may just push it over the edge.

Just checked, they have over 79,000 members. Even assuming half of these never would use the email thing, thats still a hell of alot of email addresses to account for.

[edit on 9-2-2007 by geek101]

Part of my dream last night when I came up with this idea was that ATS became so large and proffitable that it rivaled Google, Yahoo, & Myspace.

I agree that I don't know if it would be too much of a burden on bandwidth and also I don't know how it could be done without a huge cost. It's just a question.

I believe that at one time in the past, ATS did have that feature here.

But it was discontinued for some reason that I am not aware of.

* I like this thread, All of these sharp avatars. Hey Little One, need an avatar? *



[edit on 2/9/2007 by Mechanic 32]

completely off topic but...lol...i love my new avatar SO much, i am posting more today than i have done in ages

I was day dreaming about a similar thing at study, that ATS was so big it had a political arm and something like swastikas on its website. It had to be a fallacy.

edit: Just realized how irrelevant this is..

[edit on 9-2-2007 by Selmer2]

I think there was a webmail service at one point, and it was possible to purchase it for 10,000 ats points.

no idea more than that though.

first off , there may be > 75K member registrations , but there are litterealy thousands of members with no posts , or dead accounts

sort the members list by " post count " -

in reality , there are IIRC < 10k active members

and how many wouls actually want an @ATS email ?

my point ?

if an ats email serice was offered - it could be limited - to say 1000 accounts - and bandwidth capped - a limit on mail box volume and attachment size etc

its size and impact on the ATS servers is easily controlable

if a limited issue email service was offered though - it poses a thorny question , who gets one ?

the points cost seems simple and attractive - but it does penalise , unfairly newer members

we still have members who gored themselves on the " points for tags " fiasco - and got thousands of points for a very minimal contribution

whereas there are members who have only joined recently - who are posting regularly and making excellent contributions - but thier points totals are only rising slowly

i vote yes for having it - and having a limited service - but i dunno how it should be " charged for "

(note: ignore my previous post it is not on topic got carried away)

I think a service is within reason although it depends if ATS staff think its necessary or that it will attract more users. It would require mainly a great deal of storage and quality storage as well. But what do we consider a reasonable storage amount, say (MB) 10, 100, 1000?

I forget how many members we have? I forget but in this case lets say 20,000 people will actively use this service on a daily basis.

that's at least 200 gigs (not bad) but for a substantial service your looking at 2 terra and for a service in the class of google your looking at about 20 Terra.

Although I don't know if compression is involved with mail servers

so I think its a real possibility.

They closed the ATS email was because people recieved unusually massive amounts of spam for some reason, and there was actually more spam wasting bandwidth and space than actual pertinant emails.

I got here too late to get one too, and I was pretty disappointed. I would trade in all the points I have for an ATS email.

From what I can discern, it was open to everyone for a while. Then you had to pay a slowly increasing amount for one. Then they only kept it open for a while for people who already had an account, and nobody new could obtain one. Then they did away with it entirely, and now only the admin have @abovetopsecret.com emails.

The spam thing is the major issue. However, if you dropped invalid recipiants, and removed accounts with little to no activity, it may work. There could be an automatic deletion of messages over a month old, or old messages that go over a preset max mailbox capacity. ALso, you could buy an ATS email account with user points, but set it abnormally high so that only very active users would have the option. Say, 20-30,000 points. (whaddya know, I have that many points to spare )

I'm just waiting for SO to chime in though and explain why he'll never go that path again though. SO?

I know it may not even be worth the trouble. Aparently it has already been done and it did not work out that well the first time. I still think it would be awesome to have a @abovetopsecret.com account for Email. I know that spam is an issue, also that the bandwidth might be a problem, also there is the consideration of cost. So overall it might be too much hassle for what it could offer the members of this board.

I do agree if it were to be inacted it should be available only to those that wish to sign up for it or have enough points saved up for it so that we could diminish the amount of dead accounts and people that have posted verry little access to it.

The account could even be regulated to a certain amount of participation. i.e. points, that had to be spent on a monthly basis to keep the account active.

Those who have an extraordinary amount of points to donate, but are less active could be countered with a prerequisite of posts per month.

So to keep an account open, you would have pay monthly points, and post a certain number times within a certain timeframe.

maybe?

The ATS eMail was a cool idea, and was actually offered when I first
joined, and in fact my goal was to post enough to be able to get one,
but alas by the time I had enough points, it was dscontinued.

I'd like to seeit make a come back, but to get one not only should you
have to spend 10,000 points, but you should have to ave a minimum
of 1,500 or more posts.

To newer members that may seem daunting, but really, you should
not be here for an eMail address, you should be here to contribute
and to learn.

ATS e-mail has existed two times before hand.

It was removed after ATS switched to 3.0 i believe

Speaking as a person who manages multiple e-mail accounts to do what I do, I'm not sure the spam issue could be overcome. Even if all they did was allow those spiffy addresses for a select few, the anti-spam requirements would be crushing. Ask anyone who maintains just one e-mail address for a business, and you'll see what I mean. My e-mail traffic has gone up since I became a CM. I think it's got to be my responsiblity to manage how others reach me. That should include managing the spam. For that reason, I don't think ATS should do this.

I signed up for a GMail "Gmail for your domain" program, where you can choose what domain name you have after the '@,' but alas SO knocked me back.

And I think I can see why. With all those members, there are going to be those that are not going to get an account, and they will not be happy. Also, it is just something else liable to cause problems that someone must deal with.

This site is free because it posts adds...which I congradulate them all the way!