On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 08:58:57AM +0000, Paul Howarth wrote:
On Mon, 2004-12-06 at 11:31 +0800, John Summerfield wrote:
On Monday 06 December 2004 11:07, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
Please post no "post no HTML" messages.
Really, I'm in sympathy with the desire not to have to read HTML.
Fact is, they're difficult to read with kmail's default settings. At one time I had a per script that stripped HTML out of web pages and discovered I achieved a 90% reduction in file sized.
I really do not want people infringing on my good nature (such as it is) by stealing my bandwidth. I'm on dialup, and _I_ pay the bill, and _I_ get to wait while email clears my line.
If someone wants to pay for a wireless link or bidirectional sat _and_ pay me for my time, then I will grin and bear it.
Please respect other list users' requests not to have *their* bandwidth consumed by your "Please post no HTML" messages, and restrict such replies to private responses rather than replies to the list.
Paul, I hope you are aware of the recursive irony in your hypocrisy.
In case my response wasn't clear to you, I wasn't advocating that HTML posts are OK, I was suggesting that John's otherwise content-free postings were not of value to the majority of the list. John has much of interest to say, but that does not include the "Please post no HTML" messages.
My own inclination is suggest non-HTML postings *and* reply to the poster's question in the same email, or not to reply at all.
Additionally, - EVERYONE pays more when HTML is used to post to these lists. (Even people with "flat rate" access get hit. Think about it, you'll figure it out.) People in non-US countries frequently pay for their access by the byte downloaded, (Both dial-up and broadband users).
The List SPONSOR, RedHat - especially pays a great deal more.
The reasons for not using HTML are numerous and are not surmountable
The reasons for using HTML are completely unsupportable. They essentially boil down to either "I didn't know any better"
(which is fixable) or "I'm lazy", or "I'm an egoist".
I agree completely with all of this.
Finally - as to your suggestion that people only send this info by private email. :
"Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by people actively applying them, visibly, in public. Don't whine that all criticism should have been conveyed via private mail: That's not how it works. Nor is it useful to insist you've been personally insulted when someone comments that one of your claims was wrong, or that his views differ. Those are loser attitudes."
(snip)
When you can identify the source of the above quote, we can have more discussion on this.
I know exactly where this comes from. And Eric Raymond (no offence to co-author Rick Moen intended), like John, has much of interest to say but that doesn't mean I agree with all of it.
It's fine to criticise people posting HTML, but answer their questions too. Add some value to the discussion.
Paul.
