Talk:List of mail servers

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the List of mail servers article.
Article policies
Note: servers without a corresponding Wikipedia article are subject to immediate removal from this article. Before adding a server, ensure that it has an existing article, or create the article first using the software notability proposal as a guideline.

Contents

[edit] Mail transfer agent

Shouldn't this page be a redirect to mail transfer agent? --Nate Silva 14:28, 14 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Would like some help researching the various mail servers. I'm attempting to create a set of tables based on aspects rather than the current mega-table. Reboot 23:22, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bad Article Name

This article is misnamed. 'List of mail servers' implies that it is a list of physical servers located around the world. This page should be moved.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Splendour (talk • contribs) 06:06, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notability

Some of the other technology lists limit entries to those that have their own article. This ensures notability, of the server in this case, and eliminates the temptation of link spammers to add a URL just to increase their google ranking. Another advantage is that the discussion of notability happens at the article level, not here. Does any other editor have a problem if we start elminating entries that don't have an article (blue link) associated with them? JonHarder 22:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

With absence of opposing viewpoints, we can start cleaning this article by removing entries with no internal article. Servers that are unlinked, redlinked or externally linked will be removed from the lists and tables. New entries will be accepted only if an article already exists. JonHarder 21:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comparison vs list

Usually, are not comparison and list articles separate? --AndrewZ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.34.156.40 (talk • contribs) 00:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions for comparison criteria

Maybe someone could write a matrix/table article that compares Cyrus and other similar systems (such as dovecot, uw-imap, courier) based on criteria such as:

  • Supports ACL
  • Supports shared mail folders
  • Supports quotas
  • Supports which mailbox formats: mbox, maildir, maildir++, etc.
  • Supports IMAP folders arranged in a hierarchy (aka subfolders; UW-IMAP uses mbox which does not support this)

-- AndrewZ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.34.156.40 (talk • contribs) 00:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Supports DKIM

IMAP folder hierarchy is redundant to mailbox format support. UW-IMAP does support mix, which allows subfolders (and it supports many other mailbox formats as well). --Karnesky 07:59, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Authentication via filesystem? db?

What the hell is authentication via *filesystem*? Is that an odd way of saying a mail server can keep a list of users and passwords in a file? Mentioning file*system* makes me think of a structure such as having users as files or directories, and then their passwords as subdirectories or something like that.

Also, the 'DB' column is imprecise. It would be good to specify the kinds of databases, maybe some software requires something special and can't work with any SQL server for example. --Joy [shallot] 20:10, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] qmail comparison

there are several things wrong in the comparison table for qmail.

qmail-1.03 has no smtp over tls nor ssl.

also, netqmail-1.05 is not "open source". netqmail-1.05 contains qmail-1.03, which is 'free to use'. only the netqmail changes to qmail are open source.Jkister 07:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] postfix error

In what sense does postfix deliver IMAP support? Such basic errors mean this page cannot be trusted. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.137.39.71 (talk) 13:24, 30 April 2007 (UTC).

I fixed the postfix row. It looks like the table has lots of errors for others, though. --Karnesky 07:56, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Other" storage?

What does "other" refer to in the comparison table for storage? Only Exchange has a "yes." Could we eliminate the column & put a footnote for Exchange (if it deserves one)? --Karnesky 07:48, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comparisons fundamentally flawed

The page is attempting to generalize too much on what constitutes a "mail" server. This should really be broken up by protocol, such as SMTP, IMAP, POP, HTTP (with a sub reference for the protocol version of each). Saying that Sendmail lacks SSL support, for example, is really meaningless. If the tables maintain their current structure, then the SSL field among others should be moved over into a column group describing client, rather than server oriented features. Fehrgo 13:34, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] proposed guideline for inclusion

i've proposed this on a number of other lists, where it's been met with no opposition. fundamentally, the argument is that 'for lists of notable X, if X doesn't have it's own wikipedia article, it is not notable'. take care that i'm not saying that a given X is implicitly not notable - i'm merely saying that for a list, it's most helpful to confine what's listed to that which is already notable enough that it has a referring wikipedia article for people to learn more about it. on that basis, i would propose eliding all of the 'redlinked' mailservers listed. if there's a desire to have that mailserver listed, the editor should author a new article for that mailserver, then add the name back to the list. on the basis of WP:BOLD, i'm going to do so now. if there are strenuous objections, we can certainly discuss the rationale here. Anastrophe (talk) 02:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

oh, duh, i left out what is the primary reason for doing this: vandals. vandals love lists where they can dump plausible sounding entries that won't/can't be challenged. I've run across tons of these. by eliminating all redlinked (or plaintext) entries, the vandals have no entre. Anastrophe (talk) 02:50, 21 February 2008 (UTC)