From: David McIntyre <plugh_at_mudbarn.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 12:27:01 -0700

It's easier to mention it every now and then and ask people to police
themselves. Most of the time, people will try to be considerate to the list
policies and do what it takes to accomodate the list admin's wishes. Only
rarely does someone get indignant about how the community of 450+ people should
conform to their wish and change the overall policy, or even recommend
installing software that will undo what they could do with the flip of a
software switch.

On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 02:20:48PM -0400, Fred Maxwell wrote:
> Linus wrote:
>
> > No, I think it's silly of people to expect that all recipients on a
> > mailing list are using email clients capable of displaying HTML.
>
> Which people expect that? Give me some names. I know that I don't expect
> it. But I also know that I've slipped up in the past and sent HTML to
> listserver a handful of times. So will others.
>
> If you recognize that people won't all be able to display HTML, why doesn't
> the listserver strip out the HTML (using something like stripmime.pl) and
> turn the e-mails into plaintext before broadcasting them? Or, if it's that
> important to avoid HTML, bounce the messages.
>
> It's completely unrealistic to expect over 450 individual members of a
> mailing list to remember, and adhere to, a no-HTML rule each and every time
> that they post. You can demand it. You can put it into writing. You can
> publish it in FAQs. And people will still occasionally send HTML anyway.
> And then others will reply to bitch about it.
>
> So it can be fixed at the listserver or we can go through this again and
> again.
>
> Regards,
> Fred Maxwell
>

-- 
David McIntyre         plugh_at_mudbarn.com        http://www.mudbarn.com
PGP Key fingerprint = CAB5 A73A 43FA 19E3 449D  20B8 25D7 FA84 8847 D6A7
http://www.mudbarn.com/~plugh/plughinfo.txt for geek code, pgp key, etc. 

Received on 2003-10-21