Webmail Worries @ FAS

In February, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Information Technology circulated a comprehensive survey to address trends ranging from student concerns with FAS Webmail to general satisfaction with IT’s Web services.

Not surprising to Client Technology Advisor Noah S. Selsby ’94, undergraduate preference for Gmail as their e-mail client has risen from 38 percent in 2007 to 58 percent in 2008.

In addition to addressing Webmail concerns raised by the survey—both in terms of storage capabilities and speed—FAS IT has also been trying to address undergraduate dissatisfaction with e-mail addresses offered to rising freshmen.

FAS IT has stressed that it has not been deaf to undergraduate complaints; rather, they say, students may be unaware of technological limitations imposed by Harvard’s current system and the ongoing effort to address these problems.

“These are all things we have been working on this year,” Client Technology Adviser Noah S. Selsby ’94 said. “We are trying to ascertain not only what the students want, but what is going to meet all the requirements technologically.”

FAS IT released the results to its annual undergraduate survey last week that showed an increasingly widespread use of Gmail and Thunderbird forwarding services and a dissatisfaction with the FAS Webmail interface and inbox size. Aware of these rising concerns with FAS e-mail, Harvard’s IT has been developing solutions but says it is still too early to release any fixed plans for how it can resolve undergraduate complaints.

STUCK IN THE WEB

While undergraduate use of e-mail clients including Pine, Outlook, Mac Mail, and Eudora has dropped over the past year, Harvard IT has been witnessing a rise in student preferences for forwarding e-mails to Gmail.

According to Selsby, students favored Gmail’s almost unlimited inbox size, while FAS Webmail only allows a maximum inbox capacity of 40 megabytes.

“I think the two main things [FAS IT] could do would be to increase inbox size and replace the Webmail client,” president of the Harvard Computer Society Joshua A. Kroll ’09 said. “One gigabyte is so big that most people would be quelled, and there are a number of free Webmail clients available.”

Kroll added that Webmail’s spam filters could also be improved.

In FAS IT’s survey, only two percent of students were very satisfied with FAS Webmail, while 23 percent were very dissatisfied, up from 16 percent last year.

“I wish it were as easy as saying we could just outsource to Gmail,” Selsby said. “But it’s a very complex situation.”

Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) began a Gmail pilot in the fall of 2007, assigning a Gmail account to every incoming student. Students then use the Gmail interface to access the e-mail that was sent to a “gsd.harvard.edu” account.

Yet relying on an outside provider may lead to privacy issues.

“If Google somehow wasn’t reliable enough, how would we be able to switch off it?” Kroll said. “Nothing would be within FAS control.”

As not only students, but also faculty and staff, use Harvard e-mail, there are concerns that outsourcing to Gmail may compromise the integrity and privacy of the University, according to Kroll.

“There is a loss of the sense that what happens at Harvard stays at Harvard,” Kroll said.

USERNAME@FAS.HARVARD.EDU

In addition to considering changes to the FAS Webmail client this summer, Selsby also said IT will be working to address dissatisfaction with the usernames offered to undergraduates.

The summer before her freshman year, Katherine E. Smith ’10 had two address choices when she registered: “smith11@fas.harvard.edu” and “kathelismi@fas.harvard.edu.”

“Neither was particularly desirable,” she said.

She added that she was primarily unsatisfied with the addition of numbers to her last name.

Kimberly Chen ’08 faced a similar situation when she was offered only “chen14.” She said she was not unhappy wither her address, but she often receives e-mails sent to her mistakenly.

“I get misdirected e-mail all the time, mostly for people who are looking for someone else,” she said.

Students have complained about the seemingly random assignment of e-mail addresses. All the Anderson’s enrolled at Harvard were assigned some variation of “anders@fas.harvard.edu,” either with the addition of a first initial or numbers.

At yesterday’s Committee on College Life meeting, administrators discussed the e-mail addresses currently offered by FAS. Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd called the current resrictions for usernames “dehumanizing.”

“I’m all for anything that anyone can do to allow them to use their full names,” she said.

The algorithm currently used to assign usernames forms an e-mail address from a combination of the individual’s first and last names. And students with popular last names such as “Chen” or “Smith” will often have numbers attached to their addresses.

FAS runs on an older UNIX-based legacy system, which not only encompasses e-mail accounts, but also Webspace and storage space for files. Kroll said that Harvard’s e-mail system dates from the 1980s, which currently confines usernames to the technological restrictions from two decades ago. Usernames are limited to eight characters and can contain only letters and numbers.

Certain departments, such as mathematics or astronomy and astrophysics, give their faculty and staff departmental e-mails in addition to their FAS addresses, which allows for more username flexibility.

Both MIT and Caltech allow students to create their own e-mail aliases, but Kroll said Harvard may be hesitant to allow this much student freedom as it could result in unprofessional “.edu” addresses.

Yet many students have not faced the inconvenience of a mixed e-mail address of numbers and letters, either because their names are unusual or because they were assigned an address from a former undergraduate.

Undergraduate addresses are currently terminated following graduation and then recycled. The e-mail addresses for the Class of 2007 became available for the Class of 2011 in the October following graduation.

TECHNOLOGY OF TOMORROW

Selsby said he could not discuss specific updates that IT may make in the upcoming year as many of these changes are still in the formative stage, but he added that improvements for both the Webmail server and for e-mail addresses may be rolling out in phases as early as this summer.

One of the more dramatic changes that might take place next fall would involve a switch in the format of email addresses from “@fas.harvard.edu” to “@college.harvard.edu.” Incoming freshmen would only be assigned an “@college.havard.edu” address. Returning students would be given a new “@college” email address in additon to their existing “@fas” address.

According to Undergraduate Council member Brian S. Gillis ’08 at yesterday’s CCL meeting, current College addresses are confusing to those outside Harvard, especially employers unfamiliar with what “FAS” stands for.

“It obfuscates the relationship between student and college to the point where it hurts recruiting,” Gillis said. He added that unbeknownst to many, the process for this change in username extensions “doesn’t cost a cent.”

Gillis also pointed out that because Harvard Extension school students also use the “@fas” ending, it is difficult to distinguish between these students and those of the College.

Kidd agreed that making a distinction between the two schools would be beneficial.

“Ideally, we would like this to take place for freshmen the following fall but we haven’t set anything in stone so far,” Selsby said yesterday. He added that while FAS IT is technologically equipped to make this change, they still need final approval from University Hall.

FAS IT has also considered allowing longer email usernames. Selsby said the department hoped eventually to no longer reuse addresses and create unique e-mail addresses for every student who passes through the College—for example, consisting of a student’s name and graduation date. Kroll noted that a complete overhaul of Harvard’s username assignment system would be more complex than that of a smaller liberal arts college.

According to Selsby, FAS IT has also considered improving the interface for FAS Webmail and increasing the size of the inbox that would number in the gigabytes.

“The biggest message from our end is that we are aware of problems,” he said. “We’re based on an old system from way back when, but we certainly have gotten the message from students.”

—Staff writer Charles J. Wells contributed to the reporting of the story.

—Staff writer Shan Wang can be reached at wang38@fas.harvard.edu.