The recent discussion on attachments has MOSTLY taken place with lots of
cross-postings between the ietf-822 and info-mime mailing lists. I find
this unfortunate, particularly because there were a few messages that
only showed up on ietf-822 and a few that only showed up on info-mime.
I think we should try to reach some clarity about the roles of these
two lists.
Info-mime is gatewayed to netnews (comp.mail.mime), and is read by a
very wide community that doubtless includes a lot of bozos.
The ietf-822 list, however -- to which this message is being sent -- is
read only by the creme de la creme, the elite cadre of email wizards
that produced MIME. (Well, OK, maybe that's a slight exageration, but
it really is several orders of magnitude more exclusive than netnews!)
I would suggest that in general, if you're sending something other than
an ANNOUNCEMENT (new software or document available, etc.) to the
ietf-822 list, you should NOT also send it to info-mime. The ietf-822
readership is probably pretty close to a proper subset of the info-mime
readership anyway. Discussions about the continuing evolution of
Internet mail standards belong on ietf-822, while general discussion of
MIME belongs on info-mime. In other words, to the extent that MIME is a
done deal, "set in stone", it should be discussed on info-mime.
(Discussions about character sets no doubt need yet another forum...)
Does this sound like a reasonable model? I'd like to keep the ietf-822
discussions focused and high-quality, and I'd like to avoid excessive
cross-posting with info-mime.
Comments and responses to the ietf-822 list, please. There's no sense
in carrying on this discussion on info-mime since there's no practical
way to regulate the traffic on a newsgroup anyway. But it should be
possible to keep ietf-822 a high-quality working list. -- Nathaniel