LPKY uses @LPKY.org, and we were also on one of the older GMail accounts, but we only had 20 free accounts and we had more than that in leadership roles around the state.  So that didn't work out.  At our peak, we had 52 active @LPKY email addresses.  Not sure where that's all at today.

I strongly encourage people to use actual separate email addresses for party business.  You're not Hillary Clinton and if a judge subpoenas your email, they're going to take everything.   On that, I posted this to facebook a little while back:  https://www.facebook.com/ken.moellman/posts/1253086831406930

LP National owns LP.org, which in turn means we can put anything before that, for free. However, tying in the DNS to other states creates a potential failure point in the future.  It's all about a risk/reward calculation.  Personally, I think the states should all have their own domains (they're about $15/year now for a .ORG) and maintain that.  The services that LP Nat provides to the states are defined and live within a box, and we benefit from economies of scale.  Almost no one is using xx.LP.org, as noted before, which makes it an outlier and more difficult, plus there's added risk as we maintain DNS but don't maintain anything else.

I'll fix the HQ.LP.org stuff tomorrow. 



On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 2:31 AM, Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

 I always cringe when I see a local LP leader using an email address like BigDog47@yahoo.com

Hmm... Although I would prefer Underdog47@yahoo.com, I kinda like that address! Now if it were MadDog47@yahoo.com I might be a bit concerned we were dealing with a Trump supporter....   ;-)

In all seriousness, I do see some value in having the LP.org email addresses. Not because of "professionalism", which I think is overrated and less of a positive in politics than people sometimes make it out to be (which is more "professional", the world inside the D.C. beltway, or the world of Podunk, Idaho? Which is more libertarian?) but for several other virtues:  They help spread the word about the party and its website, are short and easy to use, make people easier to locate due to the standardized aspect (although the downside of that might be more spam), provide a ready option to LP officials seeking an email address to use for party matters, and – potentially – such an in-house system could allow official party emails to be archived for the sake of transparency and posterity. 

As previously expressed, if a $5000/year email package included such addresses for officials in all 51 affiliates, I could see it being a worthwhile expense. But I think that would depend on whether the system was transparent and bottom-up-friendly, and whether state parties wanted to use it. If, like Colorado, many or most are happy with what they're getting now for free, our funds might be better put toward other purposes. 

The problem is that it means we have to deal with other affiliates' stuff when we do DNS moves and things like that

I'm not a techie, but if we own a series of domain names like CA.LP.org for each state, as long as we have them linked so as to direct users to LPC.org or whatever the relevant state party's own webpage is, does this have to entail any complex back-end stuff? I thought it was a relatively simple matter to have a particular URL redirect people to a different URL.

Joshua, I'm not sure whether your question "The ability to do what now?" was addressed to me. If so, please clarify, as I don't understand what you're asking.

Love & Liberty,
                                      ((( starchild )))
At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
                           RealReform@earthlink.net
                                    (415) 625-FREE


On May 19, 2017, at 8:58 PM, Ken Moellman wrote:

The problem is that it means we have to deal with other affiliates' stuff when we do DNS moves and things like that.  They're not all that common, but the current blip is an example of problems that can come up.  I'd rather not set someone up to break LPCA or LPNY in the future. heh.

The email server provides more than just the lists.  It also provides the xxx@lp.org email aliases that provide professionalism.   I always cringe when I see a local LP leader using an email address like BigDog47@yahoo.com.  We should standardize within affiliates to look professional and serious.  In the grand scheme, I believe that providing email services for 51 affiliates is worth $5k/year.  That's $100 per affiliate, per year.  Since email hosting at a "Regular" place would cost about $4/mo/user, that's a mere 2 mailboxes per affiliate.

ken

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 8:27 PM, Joshua Katz <joshua.katz@lp.org> wrote:
The ability to do what now? ;-)

The problem with xx.lp.org, I would think, is that it means national staff and IT support need to provide maintenance for the affiliate, but we also want to allow the affiliate to make choices in how things work, forcing staff and IT support to work through potentially 52 different arrangements (50 states, DC, and national).  

Joshua A. Katz

At-Large Representative,
Libertarian National Committee



On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 7:05 PM, Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

Thanks, Ken. I remember you talking about this, and it does sound like a promising step in the right direction, but I'm still dubious about the value of paying thousands of dollars a year for in-house email lists. After all, the "economy of scale" for free is still free! If this is part of a package that would allow all LNC members and national staff to send (as well as receive, which we can do currently) mail at LP.org email addresses, and extend this capability to state affiliates, it seems like that might be worth the cost. But state party affiliates rightly value their autonomy, and I expect state party leaders might be reluctant to adopt a communications system controlled at the national level, especially if details of how it works and who has what access are murky. One question would be whether the system is equally accessible from the state and national levels. For instance if (some? all?) people at the national level would be able to use it to read state-level email traffic, would the transparency extend both ways so that some or all state-level officials could read national-level email traffic as well?

I am glad to hear the duplicative and (as far as I've ever been able to tell) non-value-adding "hq.lp.org" lists/addresses will be eliminated, along with the confusion they've sometimes generated. However it seems like there is value in having the standard formula "XX.LP.org" (where XX is the 2-letter state abbreviation) lead to that state party's website when typed into a browser window. What is the rationale for getting rid of this feature?

Love & Liberty,

                                    ((( starchild )))
At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
                        RealReform@earthlink.net
                                  (415) 625-FREE


On May 19, 2017, at 9:16 AM, Caryn Ann Harlos wrote:

Wonderful.

-Caryn Ann

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Ken Moellman <lpky@mu-net.org> wrote:
So the answer is, I broke it (on accident) but it works for most people.  Only Yahoo whines.  I'll try to fix this on Sunday.  I'm totally booked until then.

On the upside, the new system will only be about $5K per year and be able to co-host every state affiliate who chooses to use it.  Economies of scale!  Then our folks can spend less time fighting technology problems and more time doing outreach and candidate support!

Also I'll fix (read: eliminate) the legacy hq.lp.org versus lp.org stuff, too. hq.lp.org will go away.  All of the xx.LP.org addresses are going away except CA and NY, and I would love to see them phase them out.

ken

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 8:34 AM, Starchild <sfdreamer@earthlink.net> wrote:

This is the email system for which we are paying – what was the figure again, $8000 a year? Another pot of money that could be better spent being donated to Mark Wicks or another Libertarian candidate or campaign, and we could use a free Yahoo or Google list, like most of the email lists I'm on which as far as I can tell don't seem to have as many problems as the LNC's super-expensive email system does.

Love & Liberty,
                                   ((( starchild )))
At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
                         RealReform@earthlink.net
                                 (415) 625-FREE


On May 18, 2017, at 10:15 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:

Tim,

I had not seen anything from you prior to this one which did make it.  So I'll confirm receipt.  This one made it.

The list can tell me when an email from AOL/Yahoo/Earthlink addresses doesn't get distributed due to DMARC policies.  Those make it into the archive, and I can forward them to the list.

This issue is something completely different.  It happened to Tim once before maybe a couple of weeks ago, and I thought perhaps it was a one-time quirk.  But here it is again.  The nature of this sounds to me like something that we might get from routing servers outside of our direct control, but the fact that it has happened to the same person twice is probably a clue for people that know more than I do about email routing....

At least Tim gets some sort of notice back that there was a problem...though if it happened while he was trying to vote close to the deadline, he might not get the notification in time to let someone know he was having posting trouble.

-Alicia




On Thu, May 18, 2017 at 9:04 PM, Tim Hagan <timhagan-tyr@yahoo.com> wrote:
Apparently my vote did not go through. I keep getting "No mx record found for domain=hq.lp.org".



Tim

From: Tim Hagan <timhagan-tyr@yahoo.com>
To: "lnc-business@hq.lp.org" <lnc-business@hq.lp.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 14, 2017 10:41 PM
Subject: Re: [Lnc-business] Email Ballot 2017-10: Donation to the Mark Wicks campaign

I vote no.

Tim Hagan


From: Alicia Mattson <agmattson@gmail.com>
To: lnc-business@hq.lp.org
Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 11:19 PM
Subject: [Lnc-business] Email Ballot 2017-10: Donation to the Mark Wicks campaign

We have an electronic mail ballot.

Votes are due to the LNC-Business list by May 19, 2017 at 11:59:59pm Pacific time.
 
Sponsor:  Sarwark

Motion: that the LNC contribute $5,000 to the Mark Wicks for Congress campaign

-Alicia


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--
In Liberty,
Caryn Ann Harlos
Region 1 Representative, Libertarian National Committee (Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Washington) - Caryn.Ann. Harlos@LP.org
Communications Director, Libertarian Party of Colorado
Colorado State Coordinator, Libertarian Party Radical Caucus 
Chair, LP Historical Preservation Committee

A haiku to the Statement of Principles:
We defend your rights
And oppose the use of force
Taxation is theft




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