Email for expert news: the sebeg project

Introduction

Sebeg project is a project run by me, Thomas Krichel. I applied to the NGI Zero Discovery program. After NLnet pledged €5000, I started the project. The title “Email for expert news” says what the project is about. The project implements what I wrote in the proposal. But it will not do all that a final system should do. Thus comes the motivation for a code name. I gleaned it on Wikipedia’s list of Egyptian deities, where I read “Sebeg - Personification of the planet Mercury”. I apologize to the admirable South East Bus Enthusiast Group.

Project extent

The title of the project explains the reason I do it. The project itself does two things.

1. sebeg is a starting contribution to a new software called nitpo. The acronym stands for “new items poster”. Nitpo assumes dated sets of items formatted as collections XML elements. From each dated set, potentially overlapping sub-sets of items have been created, by external forces (people or software) in a non-coordinated fashion. Users are interested in one or more of these subsets. They can subscribe to receive email reflecting the subsets. These emails will be customized by removing duplicates that may be present across subsets.
   Clearly, this abstract functionality is not tied to an expertise sharing system.
2. sebeg implements nitpo for “bims: Biomed News” and “NEP: New Economics Papers”. These are indeed expertise sharing systems. Accordingly, project phases are complete only when the nitpo code is running for both projects in production.

Project phasis

There are three project phases, or milestones

1. Base: €1600

This operates the full service on an externally given stock of subscription data. For NEP, that requires some gateway software with Mailman via shell scripts. For nitpo this includes operating deduplication. For the implementation, this requires exports of documents and style sheets.

2.Signoff: €1400

Email sent contains an unsubscribe link. At that target, an unsubscribe handler handles the request. Thus we need to introduce a web interface. Subscribers are sent a confirmation email that they have been unsubscribed. the unsubscribe is confirmed out by a shell call.

3. Subscribe and other odds and ends: €2000

Subscription links are set to ernad report pages. Thus they become dynamic. Subscriptions are subject to the activation of a confirmation email. This stage includes any other work that needs to be carried out, such as formalities imposed by the funders.

Diary

2022–01‒07 current version is fired up via ernad

2021–12‒15 opened website nitpo.openlib.org

2021‒12‒13 set up mirroring from trabbi

2021‒12‒05 caching of profiles is set up

2021‒12‒03 update from mailman to profiles appears operational

2021‒11‒30 final application of full conversion

2021‒11‒23 membership directory done

2021‒11‒07 note of project acceptance