[WEB4LIB] Re: Attachments are now stripped

[Richard Wiggins]

IMHO, seems to me if the charter of the list and the list owner say the postings should be plain text, then the postings should be plain text.

Even lil ole innocent HTML can have some nasty ramifications.  For instance people have done some tricks with <IMG> tags to track who reads messages sent to large audiences.

That e-mail software now obnoxiously translates stuff to HTML without the user asking is a flaw in the software, not the rules of the list.

Honestly, I can't imagine how people are inhibited following the discussions without <h1> or <blink> or <font> tags.  Embedded URLs should be clickable within plain text messages if clickable; hyperlinks are all the HTML I need when reading a mailing list.  If you've got a formatted white paper, send the URL.

/rich

------Original Message------
From: Bob Rasmussen <ras at anzio.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: January 23, 2001 9:27:05 PM GMT
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Re: Attachments are now stripped


On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Roy Tennant wrote:

> In the wake of the Melissa virus recirculating, SunSITE system 
> administrators implemented a script that automatically strips 
> attachments from Web4Lib postings. 

I'd noticed. But I think the cure was worse than the disease, or at least it
could have been done more elegantly. Let me explain.

Of course attachments that are .EXE, .VBS, etc., are dangerous. But most
offending messages have a plain text part and an HTML part. This is a
common configuration, and I don't believe it is dangerous. I use Pine 4.21,
and it handles this quite well.

With the current handling, I see only the warning message. I have to switch to
the other "part" in order to read the original message. I suspect many folks
would not know it was there, and would therefore miss the message.

My preferences, in declining order, would be:

1. Allow HTML.

2. Place the warning message AT THE END of "part 1", the original tet message.

3. Make the original message "part 1" and the warning "part 2"

-- 
Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
 company e-mail: rsi at anzio.com 
          voice: (US) 503-624-0360 (9:00-6:00 Pacific Time)
            fax: (US) 503-624-0760
            web: http://www.anzio.com
__________________________________________________
Richard Wiggins
Consulting, Writing & Training on Internet Topics
http://www.netfact.com/rww  wiggins at mail.com
517-349-6919 (home office)  517-353-4955 (work)  
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