text vs html posts on this list...

[Michael Brininstool]

On Mon, Oct 04, 2004 at 09:47:22AM -0500, cedavila at comcast.net wrote:
> One has to respect the culture of any individual list. I've received 
> enough responses to know that html posts are not very popular here and 
> that's fine with me....so I'll send my posts in text.

I have been using mailing lists and usenet for over 20 years, and only
in the last few years have people started using html in their posts.
Using anything other than text has been considered rude the whole time.

> That said, I have to confess that I am not entirely sold on all of the 
> explanations of why html is bad. For one thing...this is a list about 
> Linux....so one presumes most of the list members are *using* Linux; are 
> there many viruses out there which will run on Linux? My last hard drive 
> cost about US$0.60 per gigabyte...so I'm not sure the "large" size of 
> html emails is a legitimate argument. The other argument was that folks 
> with dialup connections will have lengthy downloads...it's not clear 
> just how much longer it takes a typical html post to download on a 56k 
> connection than on a broadband connection, probably not much longer. 
> Also, apparently, not everyone uses email readers that support 
> html...that may have been a problem back in the days when only pine or 
> elm were around, but should this be a problem in 2004?

The "size" argument is a bandwidth issue.  Many people pay per byte of
traffic and increasing their email traffic by 2 to 5 fold is VERY unkind.
Not everyone reads their email with linux.  Some use VMS, or some other
relatively obscure operating system.  Some of us still use tty's, BTW!
The biggest reason I do not like to receive html emails is that 99% of the
html emails I get are spam, so my spam filters just toss html-only emails!

--
Michael P. Brininstool                  mikepb at hoplite.org
If my "assault rifle" makes me a criminal
And my encryption program makes me a terrorist
Does Dianne Feinstein's vagina make her a prostitute?