permaculture

[John Schinnerer <eco_living@yahoo.com>]

Aloha,

I second (or third, or wherever we're at..;-) dumping messages with
attachments on the list.
My various thoughts, with sometimes lengthy explanations:

As noted, filling up sometimes limited mailboxes without asking, thus
causing bouncing of other personal mail, is poor netiquette.

I'm not aware of *any* mail client (from dear old PINE on up) that
*needs* attachments to send plain text messages.  So there's no base
"need" for them afaik.

Another list I'm on had major trouble a while back with both spammers
and self-broadcasting viruses.  The former (spammers) often send HTML
and/or attachments, so dumping attachments reduces spam (and dumping
HTML reduces it more...).  The latter (viruses) *always* send
attachments, so dumping attachments cuts virus threat from and virus
spread through the list to pretty near zero. It sure worked on that
other list.  It can happen here...

As noted, client software is a crappy place to put this burden.  Most
can't block attachments.  And the average internet user these days
isn't tech-savvy enough to configure their clients to block or ditch
attachments even if the capability is present.

The average list user should not *need* to be that tech savvy, either. 
A listserv should be as easy and 'lightweight' to use as possible,
technology-wise, to encourage participation by those with much to learn
and/or contribute who aren't also geeks.  Web interfaces for member
account management (which we have) is one example - much easier than
having to send a special mail message to a special address for each
list function, etc. etc. like in the good old days.  Not requiring
individual users to do anything more technical than read messages and
reply or delete (unless they want to) is another.

Common netiquette precedent (for you old-timers) is that listservs most
often do not allow attachments.  

In olden days this was primarily due to drive space and bandwidth
limitations, on servers as well as clients.  Nowadays some (but not
all!) of us have lots more drive space and bandwidth - *and* software
bloat has kept up, so that a 21K text document becomes a 243K MS Word
document and a 6K text document becomes a 209K (!) MS Word document
(these are *actual* figures from the two attachments in Jude Hobbs'
post).  So space and bandwidth are *still* issues where bloat-formatted
attachments are concerned.

And then there's the software/file compatibility issue - sending
everyone on the list a (big fat) file that some can't open
successfully, that sort of thing, thus generating requests for a
reposting in a different format and objections to the reposting and
then a whole bunch of posts discussing whether or not the list should
allow attachments... ;-)

So my input is: no attachments on the list; post a message sayin' what
cool documents or images or whatever ya got and whomever wants 'em can
get 'em off-list or, where possible, reading/view/download 'em at a web
site somewhere.

LL, what about setting up a secure post/view/download space on your
server?  Common UID and PW given to the list...would probably be quite
a while before it leaked to anyone who abused it, then just change the
PW...??


=====
John Schinnerer, MA
-------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
Food - Water - Shelter - Community - Technology
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax
http://taxes.yahoo.com/