[tor-bugs] #23697 [Webpages/Website]: List frontdesk, not execdir, on the contact page

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#23697: List frontdesk, not execdir, on the contact page
----------------------------------+--------------------
     Reporter:  arma              |      Owner:  (none)
         Type:  enhancement       |     Status:  new
     Priority:  Medium            |  Milestone:
    Component:  Webpages/Website  |    Version:
     Severity:  Normal            |   Keywords:
Actual Points:                    |  Parent ID:
       Points:                    |   Reviewer:
      Sponsor:                    |
----------------------------------+--------------------
 The current situation, which we inherited slowly over time, is that
 https://www.torproject.org/about/contact#email lists only donations@ and
 execdir@ as contact addresses. The result is that execdir gets 5-10 new
 mails each day from people who are trying to get support or otherwise
 trying to reach a real human. I have no idea what donations@ gets, but
 probably at least that many since it's listed first.

 At the same time, we quietly created frontdesk@, with the goal of shifting
 traffic to it once the new support site is ready. Colin and Alison stepped
 in to be interim frontdesk people. For the past year or so I have been
 bouncing mails from execdir to frontdesk when I get around to doing it.
 But I haven't done that since July now, which means 300+ sad people who
 never even got an acknowledgement to their mail that they sent to (to be
 fair, from our perspective) the wrong place.

 But why wait for the support page to be ready? I think we should list
 frontdesk on the contact page now. Shari also pointed out that we could
 remove execdir, and then the frontdesk folks could fwd mail that the
 execdir folks should see -- rather than the current backwards approach.

 Now, another reason we had been delaying re-starting something like a
 helpdesk was because we had some psychotic behavior in the past where
 various people thought we needed to not purge incoming mails regularly. We
 still need to come up with a good data retention (well, more like enforced
 data deletion) policy, e.g. we scrub tickets after they've been in the
 system for 30 days. And we need to think through the safety aspects for
 our users of whether we have, or cause to exist, interesting metadata like
 network traces of people sending us email. Our reasoning so far has been
 "Well, we didn't encourage them to mail us, so it's not really our fault
 if they do. We hope they've thought it through", and I think we can do
 better.

 But in the mean time, I think we should be able to get started by putting
 a nice clear warning next to the frontdesk address on the contact page,
 telling people that it's not for support, and if they need good privacy
 they should contact us some other way (should we give some suggestions?
 maybe not?), and whatever else we want to warn them about before they
 decide to send the mail. Then the mails will go directly to the people who
 volunteered to read and handle them. And then we can work to make that
 frontdesk experience a more sustainable one.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23697>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online