Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Kirk Lowery <Kirk AT GrovesCenter.org>]

On 09/11/2012 11:28 AM, Jerry Shepherd wrote:
> Hi Kirk and Co-Moderators
>
> I see you've been doing some testing.  Is there any chance you can also
> look at the email acceptance problem as well.  I know Rolf and I have both
> had problems, and there may be others as well.  For my main email program,
> which is the one I use through my workplace.  I receive the emails from the
> list fine, but I can't post to the list.  The email never shows up on the
> list, and I don't get a non-delivery notice either.  So I end up having to
> use another email program (Gmail), which isn't as versative or friendly, to
> post to the list.  I don't know if this is a problem specific to this list
> or if it is with ibiblio.  But anyway, it would be nice if I didn't have to
> do that.
Jerry,

When b-hebrew first moved from the University of Virginia to ibiblio.org
where we are today, we chose to force all posts to be plain text. At the
time, html email was new and there were a lot of nasty exploits that
were being embedded in html email messages.

A couple of months ago something changed in the software system used by
our list; all of a sudden some -- not all! -- incoming email messages
were being silently discarded instead of being converted to plain text.
I followed up with the kind help desk folks at ibiblio.org and tracked
down what was happening. I'll pass over boring technical details, but in
the end I was able to get the software to pass html email to the
html->plain text converter. As you can see from the test emails, I was
less than successful in solving the problem. I'm continuing to interact
with ibiblio.org to see if we can nail down the problem. It's
frustrating in that not all html email is handled incorrectly; as you
noted, Gmail (which uses html extensively) comes through just nicely.

The best solution is to set your email software to send plain text --
not html -- to b-hebrew. For example, my software is Mozilla's
Thunderbird and it lets me set a default encoding for most email, but it
also let's me set encoding on an individual basis. So in my address
book, my b-hebrew contact has the option "Plaintext only" set. Or you
can continue to use your gmail account as you have been doing.

The moderators are currently in discussion about the possibility of
relaxing our prohibition of html email. The hard part is to evaluate
what the level of risk is. What we might do is allow html email for a
probationary period. If we do chose to change policy, we will inform the
list.

Expect a decision by the end of the week.

-- 
Blessings,
Kirk
--
/Kirk E. Lowery/, PhD
President & Senior Research Fellow
The J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research