Can't use your own e-mail address as contact address for a team

The only restriction we impose is that you can't use the same email address for a person and a team at the same time. You can create the new team without an email address or using one that is not already in use by another person/team in Launchpad.

That's not really reasonable. What if I've already registered all my e-mail addresses with Launchpad? Should I then have to get a new Hotmail account for every team I register? :-)

The team registration form doesn't really make sense here. "If no contact address is chosen, notifications directed to this team will be sent to all team members. After finishing the team creation, a new message will be sent to this address with instructions on how to finish its registration." But if no contact address is chosen, how can you finish registration at all?

On Tue, Feb 06, 2007 at 08:11:24PM -0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> That's not really reasonable. What if I've already registered all my
> e-mail addresses with Launchpad? Should I then have to get a new Hotmail
> account for every team I register? :-)
>

No, you can register a team without a contact address.

> The team registration form doesn't really make sense here. "If no
> contact address is chosen, notifications directed to this team will be
> sent to all team members. After finishing the team creation, a new
> message will be sent to this address with instructions on how to finish
> its registration." But if no contact address is chosen, how can you
> finish registration at all?
>

Yeah, the message is a bit confusing, but it says that after finishing the
team creation a message is sent in order to register the email address, not
the team (which is already created). IOW, the team creation is finished right
after you submit the form, whether you provided a contact address or not. When
you provide the contact address you also have the opportunity to follow the
link on the message we send to associate the contact address with the team.

Ok, so the team registration form should downplay, and better explain, the use of an e-mail address for the team.

On Fri, Feb 09, 2007 at 04:03:15AM -0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Ok, so the team registration form should downplay, and better explain,
> the use of an e-mail address for the team.
>

Definitely. Do you have any suggestions on how to better explain it there? Or
would it be better to drop the option to specify an email address when
creating a team?

I was going to suggest renaming it to "Mailing list address". But since "If no contact address is chosen, notifications directed to this team will be sent to all team members", even that would be redundant.

What proportion of teams use the field currently? Perhaps we could talk with some of them and see if dropping it would cause any grief.

On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 03:09:57AM -0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> I was going to suggest renaming it to "Mailing list address". But since
> "If no contact address is chosen, notifications directed to this team
> will be sent to all team members", even that would be redundant.
>
> What proportion of teams use the field currently? Perhaps we could talk
> with some of them and see if dropping it would cause any grief.

I don't think simply dropping the contact address of a team is a good
idea. One example is ubuntu-bugs, where the members get permission to
edit a bug's importance, but they usually don't want to receive all the
bug notifications that are sent to the ubuntu-bugs mailing list.

Another example is Launchpad itself. If the bug notifications weren't
sent to a mailing list, it would be impossible to know which
notifications were sent to me directly, and which were sent to the
team. (This is bug 3797)

On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 08:26:22AM -0000, Björn Tillenius wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 12, 2007 at 03:09:57AM -0000, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> > I was going to suggest renaming it to "Mailing list address". But since
> > "If no contact address is chosen, notifications directed to this team
> > will be sent to all team members", even that would be redundant.
> >
> > What proportion of teams use the field currently? Perhaps we could talk
> > with some of them and see if dropping it would cause any grief.
>
> I don't think simply dropping the contact address of a team is a good
> idea. One example is ubuntu-bugs, where the members get permission to
> edit a bug's importance, but they usually don't want to receive all the
> bug notifications that are sent to the ubuntu-bugs mailing list.
>
> Another example is Launchpad itself. If the bug notifications weren't
> sent to a mailing list, it would be impossible to know which
> notifications were sent to me directly, and which were sent to the
> team. (This is bug 3797)
>

I hope Matthew was talking about dropping it from the +newteam page, right
Matthew?

Cheers,

--
Guilherme Luis R. Salgado

Actually I was thinking of dropping it altogether. I agree that dropping it from +newteam would be a good step, but it would be only a partial fix for this bug.

I think dropping the field from the newteam page is okay, but I struggle to understand how this would be a major improvement, and think this bug is more in merit of a wontfix than anything else.

Marking it as Won't Fix wouldn't solve the problem.

I'm exactly arguing for us not to solve this problem, as I don't think it's worth solving.

I just helped a Launchpad user create a new team and this field was particularly confusing. She had registered adresses in her LP user, had to de-register them, then use a separate one for the team...

Usability would be greatly improved if this was presented in a different way, as the current form implies one could be using our own contact information. After reading comments here, I still can't understand why (or why not).

Related: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/launchpad-foundations/+bug/31590

I'd like to expose my personal experience of this particular field and why I think it matters that the situation should change.

I am a subscribed launchpad user using it for few ubuntu bugs since a little while.

I created a project yesterday and I wanted a mailing list for it. A devel mailing list.

I looked into the people tab of my project's details and the driver field clearly states: "This person or team will be able to set feature goals for and approve bug targeting or backporting for ANY major series in this project. You might want to leave this blank and just appoint a team for each specific series, rather than having one project team that does it all."

So I decided to follow this field's recommendation and not create a Driver team. Until I find trustable people anyway.

Now, I want to create a team. I get to the "Register a new team" page. Reading the fields, I want to be the contact email address! Reading the description, I am slightly confused but reading:

"This is the email address we'll send all notifications to this team. If no contact address is chosen, notifications directed to this team will be sent to all team members. After finishing the team creation, a new message will be sent to this address with instructions on how to finish its registration."

I want to get notifications and don't want to bother other people with them. The problem is I don't know what a notification is (I am not part any team right now).. So I wonder, will they get a mail on every commit? every bug? every user registering to the team? Knowing this would clarify my decision.

Then, in a damage minimizing reaction, I decided to put my own email in the field only to realize that I can't do it!? Not being able to decide to receive notifications and then, realizing what they are, enable team member to get them IMO is a usability issue in this form. The field should be explained a little better or removed altogether. I vote for the former.

I've just read MPT's suggestion of "Mailing List Address" in comment #6.

So *that's* what it's for? (Five years of confusion and I'm still puzzled).

What I think most people want when trying to use this field is a tickbox:

  [x] Do not spam members of the team directly.

@paul

There are two underlying issues for this issue. Launchpad confused control with community. It created teams as an ACL mechanism, but humans know teams are more about communication and organisation. Launchpad does not allow team admins to do their job. It often send email to the team owner who is not a member, or the members.

In the later case we are testing changes to notifications that will help Lp select the correct admins to notify. There are many places in Lp that will need to change to use it though.

In the former case, Robert and I have proposed that Launchpad allow the owner to clearly state whether the team is intended for control or community, which will help select who needs to get messages, and also help users understand the consequences of placing a community team in an ACL role.

I think the underlying issue of this issue would be solved by bug 1012787 which wishes to limit email notifications to team admins.