Definition of class Email Messaging

[swartik]

The definition of class Email Messaging is:

An Act of Communication by Media in which text-based communication occurs between two or more people using personal computers or other devices using some Email Client Software conveyed over the Internet.

I have several problems with this definition:

1. I frequently use email to send and receive images. Sometimes the subject line is the extent of the text-based communication. Sometimes there isn't a subject line.
2. "The Internet" is also problematic for me. I use email on classified systems. My emails are conveyed using the Internet Protocol, but that's not the same thing as "the Internet".
3. Some messages I send are processed by agents. They don't involve two people.
4. In some architectures, two systems communicate via email with no human oversight or intervention.

Here's a proposed revised definition:

An Act of Communication by Media via Internet Message Format-based communication or an extension thereof.

IMF-based communication refers to RFC 2822. RFC 2822 is restricted to text, hence the extension qualifier.

[APCox]

@jordancundiff

[APCox]

I agree this can use some improvement for the reasons you've enumerated. A couple questions:

3. Some messages I send are processed by agents. They don't involve two people.

By "agents" here, do you mean an automated system or computer program? For example, sending an email to it.support@yourcompany.imadethisup which is taken as an input by some tasking system (e.g., JIRA) to generate a task/issue for your IT department to address?

Here's a proposed revised definition:

An Act of Communication by Media via Internet Message Format-based communication or an extension thereof.

IMF-based communication refers to RFC 2822. RFC 2822 is restricted to text, hence the extension qualifier.

I wonder whether it hurts to keep a reference to some Email Client Software or something similar to make the definition abundantly clear without requiring users to be familiar with or reference RFC 2822?

[swartik]

By "agents" here, do you mean an automated system or computer program? For example, sending an email to it.support@yourcompany.imadethisup which is taken as an input by some tasking system (e.g., JIRA) to generate a task/issue for your IT department to address?

Yes, that's what I had in mind. I used "agents" because the definition of class Act of Communication says an ICE is transferred from some Agent to Another.

I wonder whether it hurts to keep a reference to some Email Client Software or something similar to make the definition abundantly clear without requiring users to be familiar with or reference RFC 2822?

I wondered about that too. I chose the reference to RFC 2822 because CCO doesn't define "Email Client Software". Do you consider Python's smtplib and email packages to be email client software, and do you think most CCO users would as well? And if you use gmail through a browser, what exactly is the email client software? It's some combination of your browser and downloaded JavaScript. In other words, if you start to think about it, email client software isn't much simpler than an RFC. But I could go either way.

[jordancundiff]

what about something like this:

• An Act of Communication by Media transmitting and receiving digital messages via Internet Message Format-based communication, or an extension thereof, over a computer network.

This is a blend of the wikipedia definition and what @swartik is suggesting. I think that the fact that these are being transmitted over a computer network not, as you rightly point out the "Internet," is important to keep. Do you think that having the fact that these are "digital messages" is helpful in this definition? I think your points in 3 and 4 are well-made.

[APCox]

@swartik Please review Jordan's revised definition.

[swartik]

I like Jordan's definition much better. I'm going to make two suggestions to ponder for a future revision:

1. If Email Messaging uses IMF-based communication, is the network necessarily an IP-based computer network?
2. The superclass definition states that an IBE is transferred from sender(s) to receiver(s). Can an email message have more than one sender?

[APCox]

Approved to create a PR with the proposed definition change.

[alanruttenberg]

The superclass Act of Communication by Media, is wrong. When was the last time you packed an email message into a box and shipped it to its recipient? And even if some time in your life you did this, a) would it be called email messaging? and b) being a subclass means the subclass definition is true for all of the instances of the subclass. It is certainly not the case that all email messaging involve shipping tangible items to someone.

The parent class should be "Act of communication".
The only subclass of "Act of Communication by Media" that I can see making sense is "Mailing".

[APCox]

The superclass Act of Communication by Media, is wrong. When was the last time you packed an email message into a box and shipped it to its recipient? And even if some time in your life you did this, a) would it be called email messaging? and b) being a subclass means the subclass definition is true for all of the instances of the subclass. It is certainly not the case that all email messaging involve shipping tangible items to someone.

The parent class should be "Act of communication". The only subclass of "Act of Communication by Media" that I can see making sense is "Mailing".

These issues will be addressed in a subsequent PR. For now, we can make the definition improvement and close this issue out, especially since addressing the larger issue will involve changing other subtypes of Act of Communication by Media.