Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Name Conflicts In Automatically Generated Email Addresses?
New submitter matteocorti writes "I work at medium-sized university and we are considering reducing the number of domains used for email addresses (now around 350): the goal is to have all the 30K personal addresses in a single domain. This will increase the clashes for the local part of the address for people with the same first and last name (1.6%). We are considering several options: one of them is to use 'username@domain.tld' and the other is to use 'first.last@domain.tld.' The first case will avoid any conflict in the addresses (usernames are unique) but the second is fancier. Which approach does your organization use? How are name conflicts (homonyms) solved? Manually or automatically (e.g., by adding a number)?"
Or you could, you know, conventionally assume the conventions of where your company is based, and treat special cases as special cases.
Then let them use a private, on-line account.
In a professional environment, you always use your real name. Yes, I know this is a university, but someday the students are going to need to learn how the business world works.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
If usernames won't give conflicts, then use them. And for the people that wants fancier emails, you can put aliases as firstname.lastname while there are no duplicates
My university takes the unique usernames approach ( abc123@mail.domain.tld ), but also creates aliases for everyone ( generally in the form first.last@domain.tld , but the user actually can choose whatever they want, if there's a collision). Seems to work well enough.
It is a Western university.
First off, no one wants a 200 character email address and we are limited to Western characters.
Anyone going to a Western university has a Western style name to use in cases such as this.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.