On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 11:36:05AM -0600, Vernon Schryver wrote:
Not to be difficult, just to see if I agreed, I looked at October, 2002
Of the 42 total (if I counted right), I found 6 that had real HTML
formatting. Three of those were what might be called formal presentation
documents intended for bulk distribution (e.g. seminar timetables)
instead of person-to-person or person-to-mailing-list email.
Distribution of seminar timetables (some of which were drafts for
discussion, IIRC) was one of the purposes of that mailing list. (It was a
list for the UK organisers of the European Social Forum, who needed to
exchange information about the seminars they were organising.)
Was that month unusual or did I count wrong?
That month was unusual in having a lot of plain-text messages; the number of
HTML messages (of both kinds) was more consistent from month to month.
Do you agree that documents such
as the seminar timetables aren't strictly admissible? I certainly
agree that HTML is appropriate for those documents, but they're also
legitimate bulk mail that should be subject to white-listing.
Lists that people use for organising events often include such documents,
which then get discussed, revised, and reposted. In any case, some
anti-spam strategies require white-listing in order to accommodate mailing
lists at all. (Which seems OK to me.)
If you often receive event announcements (as I do), and therefore have to
read them very quickly, having the most important bits in red or in boldface
(as in a few messages on that list) can be quite helpful.
Also, on that particular list, people sometimes posted documents in plain
text, or in unadorned ('useless') HTML, which would have benefitted from
some HTML formatting, e.g. documents with headings and sub-headings. Not
just seminar timetables, but meeting summaries, and drafts of official
declarations. Typically people used all caps for the headings, where a
bigger font might have been more readable.
Many of the real HTML messages included plaintext versions.
How do you suppose their authors would have responded if it were
suggested that HTML was a bad idea?
I guess it depends on whether a really convincing case can be made that HTML
is harmful, and whether it outweighs the perceived benefits. In my
experience, telling people that they shouldn't use HTML for legitimate
purposes, because spammers and virus writers also use it, doesn't come
across as very logical.
It should be noted that the Mailman archive of that list might have
discouraged the use of HTML. The ugliness of HTML in that vintage of
Mailman archives is one of the reasons why I've configured Mailman to
reject HTML submissions to the DCC mailing lists.
I know, those archives are horrible. It's one reason why I've given up on
Mailman altogether, and switched to Sympa (http://www.sympa.org).
Ben
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