Notifications?

[Furnish, Trever G]

Actually my first thought was a daily email message with a list of messages
(sender and subject), and since the goal would be to make it quick and
simple, how about a checkbox by each message row and a submit button at the
bottom of the message.  We'd just embed a form tag in the me...  Oh, wait,
form tag.  Nevermind. ;^)

But then, along the same lines, it occurs to me that putting even just a
list of message senders and subjects into a digest to be sent to the user
may be likely never to get there ... because it would be likely considered
spam.

And that leads me to, "Well, that's ok, I really didn't want another daily
message anyway."  And THAT, leads me in turn to the idea that perhaps
instead of daily digests, we could automatically create a username and
password for access to a web interface that allows releasing messages.  This
username would just be the email address and the password something
autogenerated.  It would be sent to the user the first time a spam was
stored, then only sent again if the user loses the password and requests it.

Several advantages here, not the least of which is that instead of waiting
for a daily digest listing the blocked messages, the user could hit the web
page as soon as they suspect a message has been blocked.  For example, when
Tom emails Bob a message and Bob is waiting for it, after a few minutes he
doesn't have to say "It didn't come through, I bet the spamfilter got it -
I'll call the helpdesk" - instead he can say "Hold on, maybe it got stuck in
that dang spamfilter again - let me check."

Of course, immediacy of being able to check for a "stuck" message implies
real-time (not batched) logging into a database or log file - otherwise the
user would have to wait for MS to flush its logs.

-t.

PS: I reserve the right to be wrong. :-)