--On Thursday, March 15, 2012 00:00 -0400 Ross Callon
<rcallon(_at_)juniper(_dot_)net> wrote:
I don't like this proposal for two reasons: I frequently read
email while not connected; When connected, bandwidths have
gotten high enough that attachments on the most part are not
slowing things down in an uncomfortable way.
It might be okay for really large attachments, as long as only
a few messages are affected.
Borrowing a bit from Randy, the solution to really large
attachments is to ban them. Personally, I'd find it perfectly
reasonable to have any message in the megabyte range or above
(or probably even an order of magnitude smaller) rejected with a
message that amounted to "if you have that much to say, write an
I-D, post it, and point to it". That is much more plausible
today, when the mean time between I-D submission and posting is
measured in minutes (except during blackout periods) than when
it was in days. During blackout periods, the last thing the
community needs is people adding to already-overloaded lists by
posting long documents in email.
If people want to use up part of their maximum size quota by
posting html in addition to text, or appending long disclaimers
or autobiographies, that shouldn't the community's problem.
You begin by talking about "banning large attachments". You then segue
into a discussion where you talk about a maximum size that includes the
primary message content, not attachments, then you throw in disclaimers,
which may or may not be attachments.
Other have followed up by supporting the limit on attachment size, others
still have talked about banning attachments regardless of size.
Do you see the problem here? The minute you start focusing on specifics
of message content, you're in a rathole. What counts as an attachment?
(And yes, we have a precise definition for what constitutes an attachement,
but following that definition gives people the ability to route around
it.)
It follows that any limit needs to be on overall message size. (Even
this is a little perilous because message sizes can change due to
MIME downgrading or upgrading, both of which happen regularly.) I would
not be opposed to imposing such a limit, although it's going to need to
be higher than some people would probably like - it's surprising how
easily you can approach 1Mb with a single part, plain text message
containing nothing remotely resembling an "attachment".
Ned