Re: [PLUG] web access email adds html code in message

[Art Alexion <art.alexion@gmail.com>]

On Saturday 10 October 2009 15:25:45 JP Vossen wrote:
> It also raises the issue of the incredible waste of bandwidth that HTML
> email causes all by itself, which is then compounded by the fact that as
> previously noted, 99.99_% of emails contain both HTML and plain text,
> thus at *least* doubling the size of every message.

There was a recent discussion of this (and it's evil twin, top-posting) on the 
evolution list.  Now this is an open source, mostly Linux MUA, and yet a 
sizeable number participating in the discussion felt that plain text and 
bottom posting was "only for technical lists".  And while evolution supports 
threaded sorts and select to quote, a number said they were "too busy to edit 
the quote" and that quoting everything was important in business email 
to "preserve the record".

More interesting was the belief that email was so small, relative to other 
internet traffic, that increased bandwidth and storage demands, were not 
worth getting concerned about.

Anyone here who has ever administered an email server knows how silly these 
beliefs are.  But we live in a world where these seem to be the "conventional 
wisdom" -- and though we know that conventional wisdom is, by its nature, 
usually wrong -- it is a reality we must live with.

So I use what I believe are "best practices" in email, try to lead by example, 
and try not to slam my head against a wall lecturing others.

My pet peeve, that I also live with, is thread hijacking, an evil promulgated 
by those without threaded sorting.  Like JP who never sees html mail in his 
digests, I don't see topics hidden inside threads that I have chosen to 
ignore, even though I may have otherwise been interested in the hijacker's 
contribution.

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