User talk:Kbrose

What is an ESP?

Hi Kbrose,

it is a frequent sort of misunderstanding when people use the same term to indicate different things. By ESP, the majority of people mean a company which offers email marketing or bulk email services, which is what I wrote on 7 March 2013. The rest conflate ESP and Mailbox Provider. Since the latter term is perfectly unambiguous, I see no reason to reiterate the misunderstandings caused by improper use of the term ESP. I regret Wikipedia has been supporting such equivocation since 2 September 2011. I believe that editing was written in good faith, and notified the author of my correction in his talk page. I used that ambiguous acceptation of the term myself, until someone corrected me thus. What is the point of using ambiguous terms?

I'm not clear on what you mean by narrow recital of promotional site. I provided a citation from ReturnPath, which I'd consider knowledgeable on email subjects. The author of that glossary, Joanna Roberts, boasts people like John Levine and Murray Kucherawy among her LinkedIn contacts. At a minimum, that means she has access to first-hand solid reference about email. I referenced that page because I've been unable to find a clearer definition. I also added a {{Distinguish|Mailbox Provider}}, and symmetrically a {{Distinguish|Email service provider}}, both of which you took care to remove. Why?

It is part of everybody's email experience to get hit by unwanted messages, generically tagged as spam. Some people and organizations try to send commercial bulk email claiming that it is not unsolicited and, at least, do not hide their identities while doing so. Perhaps they ought to be distinguished from those who do the same thing by criminal means, such as controlling botnets. Certainly, they are not the same kind of people and organizations who run email servers on behalf of their users --free, corporate, or whatever. Conflating different email operators and lumping them all together is not going to help overcome the spam phenomenon. May I ask what are you trying to achieve by deranging those definitions?

ale (talk) 15:58, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Well, I have to go back and look exactly what you are referring to, but when there are no definitive reference or definitions in the field, it is not Wikipedia's task or desire to invent them. Whom people have as social media contacts purveys no credibility to their opinions. Since you appear to confirm the ambiguity of these terms, then why don't you concede that articles should reflect the ambiguity, rather than create definitions that don't exist. Such definitions would just be your opinion and are not permissible work for WP. Wikipedia reports RELIABLE sources, it does not create new order, definitions, or any kind of original thought. I have hands-on experience with electronic mail since the early 1980s (!) and have not encountered precise definitions. Such ambiguities exist in all kinds of market places. Why does there need to be a precise definition of email service provider? Stick to the meaning of the words, email, service, and provider. So an email service provide is most like someone who provides any kind of email service. Why does it need to be narrowly restricted? A food service provider would suffer similar ambiguity. Even the commercial writings of a provider on their website is not a reliable source, as it is intended to sell a product, not educate in an unbiased manner. When they create definitions like they do, it's for advertisement, to try to own the term for their benefit, because they certainly cannot trademark it anymore. Furthermore, the article created proper nouns for these concepts that plainly do not exist. The article email service provider should simply be deleted, it is mostly fiction, the term can be explained in one sentence in the article Internet service provider. Lastly, why do you want to discus this on my talk page and not on the relevant article pages? Kbrose (talk) 17:34, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

I filed a proposal for deletion yesterday. Please repeat there that "The article email service provider should simply be deleted" if you still hold that opinion. ale (talk) 11:06, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Work (thermodynamics)

Hello Kbrose. Your recent edit to the lede of Work (thermodynamics) - (see your diff) - has been challenged at Talk:Work (thermodynamics). (See the new thread "own research re-write of lede is wrong".) Please join the discussion at the new thread. Dolphin (t) 08:45, 12 April 2013 (UTC)