Obese mail messages (was: Re: drivers)

[Jerry Dunham]

On 30 May 2005 at 10:03, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:

> On Monday, 30 May 2005 at  9:39:04 +0930, Tim Aslat wrote:
> > On Mon, 30 May 2005 08:42:26 +0930
> > Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Nowhere is a good place to send 10 MB of illegible log output.  Please
> >> don't.
> >
> > I agree.
> >
> >> Do you really expect people to read this?  It's incorrectly coded, and
> >> it's far too long.  Many people pay for their mail; you have cost me
> >> personally $2.00 to download this message.
> >
> > Knowing what kind of setup you have Greg, I can believe that.
> >
> > Although it has opened up a rather large can of worms.  Can the list
> > maintainers restrict message sizes to less than a meg?  I honestly
> > can't imagine any possible reason for sending an attachment larger than
> > 500K (shar files, etc) to a public mailing list.
> >
> > Is it worth looking into doing this, or am I barking up the wrong
> > metaphor?
> 
> I suppose it's reasonable.  On the other hand, in my recollection this
> is the first time this has happened.

If this is the first time it's happened, then setting a 1 MB (or 2 MB) 
limit won't affect many people, nor will it affect anyone you don't want 
to affect.  I think a limit is quite reasonable.

If someone on the list has something really large to send, he or she can 
always offer it first, and then only those truly interested will reply 
and can get it directly, off list, saving the rest of the list membership 
the time and expense.


--
Jerry Dunham
jdunham at texas.net