Yes, Virginia, There is a Postmaster

If you've ever suspected that the UC Davis postmaster is a machine, software program, or U.S. mail clerk, guess again. The postmaster is a very real person with a name, Debbie Edwards. A veteran of the UC Davis campus for nearly 14 years, Edwards marks her two-year anniversary as full-time postmaster this month.

In the past few years email usage has escalated on campus, and the UC Davis postmaster has become a more visible presence. Viewing this as an opportunity to reach out to the campus community, Edwards has taken an active role in educating people about email. She makes presentations to the campus, and co-teaches IT Training courses on mailing list administration. That's in addition to responding to the 200-odd email messages and numerous phone calls that she receives each day.

Edwards begins her day by logging in to three different email accounts. There's her personal account, for inter-office mail and the newsgroups and mailing lists she subscribes to. Then, as accounts administrator, Edwards receives the mail directed to accounts@ucdavis.edu, from people whose computing accounts have been terminated automatically by the system. Lastly, there's postmaster@ucdavis.edu, with an average daily mail load of 150 messages, and a record maximum of 4,500 in one day.

The postmaster receives a copy of every error message generated by every mailing list on campus. She also receives mail delivery errors when mailboxes "bounce" their mail.

"There are eight or so different mailboxes that feed into the postmaster account," Edwards says. "It keeps me very busy."

Requests for electronic mailing lists make up a large portion of Edward's email. She creates both the lists administered by listproc, the interactive mailing list processing program, and the automated class mailing lists, or ACLs. Established last quarter, ACLs are course mailing lists that initiate and maintain subscriptions according to information fed directly from the Banner Student Information System. So far this quarter, the number of ACLs has topped 250, with nearly 15,000 subscribers.

Edwards also receives a number of complaints from users each day, some dealing with spam, or unwanted "junk" email, others reporting abuses by other users. "I consider myself a proactive postmaster," she says. "But I'm a reactive abuse handler. In other words, I don't go looking for people that have misused their accounts, but when I get a complaint I investigate it, and I deal with it."

The most common abuses, Edwards says, are chain letters, commercial uses of campus accounts, mass postings to newsgroups, and sharing of accounts with unauthorized users. The one duty she regrets is having to suspend the accounts of people who misuse them. "Everybody who comes to see me gets to read the Acceptable Use Policy," Edwards says, referring to the UC Davis document (also known as the Computer and Network Policy) that sets out rules and guidelines for holders of campus computing accounts. "I have them read it, I have them ask questions, and I usually highlight the part of the policy for which they got suspended." These sessions are required in order to reinstate an account, and Edwards views them as learning opportunities. She considers the process a success. "In all the time I've been doing this, I've had only two repeat offenders," she says.

Edwards isn't planning a two-year anniversary party, but it's clear she regards the occasion with personal and professional satisfaction, due partly to the expressions of gratitude she receives regularly from her clients. Last year she received over 2,000 thank-you messages by email. "I really enjoy what I do," she says, "and I enjoy working at UC Davis. As postmaster, I'm part of IT -- IT pays my wages, and I'm a part of that organization. But I belong to the whole campus."

Contact Information:

Phone: 752-1208

Email: postmaster@ucdavis.edu

Web site: http://email.ucdavis.edu/