[Fourlanders] Blank Messages and the List Server

[Brian McCarthy]

Hello All,

The list has not changed. It did not suddenly start doing things that it
had not done before. It did not break. I have been quietly trying to see
what I can do to help the situation. It is not easy.

Slowly though, through the years, all of us have changed aspects of how we
consume and create our email. We start using graphics, and HTML and other
things to make it look pretty. The Mailman list server was meant to do
plain text email. This is its history.

Until this morning, our list was "converting" HTML emails to plain text. I
have turned off this conversion this morning, and we'll just have to see
how it goes. This probably won't help the MIME header aspect of the
trouble, but it should help Johnny, K4SQC. A few months back he had some
trouble with messages that had no content. We found that it was the HTML
getting stripped (probably a conversion fault.) He found that he could set
his email to not send HTML (possibly mail for the reflector only.) This
change with HTML is experimental. If it causes some other trouble, I will
return to converting HTML.

John, N8UR, got it right. Most of the recent "blank emails" actually have
content. The MIME content seems to not be read correctly. I have been able
to display the content (along with a lot of header gobbledygook) by using
"Show Original" in Gmail. For a simple one sentence email there is a
disturbing amount of header and housekeeping overhead in each message.
Email was once simple. Those days are long gone.

If someone generates a message with troublesome MIME, many of the replies
get marked with the same MIME content headers. We then have a situation
that looks to some like an epidemic of broken messages. Our email clients
have gotten too smart. Unfortunately, some clients are smarter than others.
Some email clients generate MIME headers that are not in exact compliance
with standards. Any of you that have tried to write a web page understand
the challenge. Different browsers behave in very different ways. If more of
us would use simple email with plain text, the list would "have no trouble"
at all.

Unfortunately, all these graphics features start to work against us.

There are some other things that the list server does to help keep us safe.
Any attachments with the extensions .exe, .bat, .cmd, .com, .pif, .scr,
.vbs or .cpl are also stripped. I believe these are appropriate. Any
disagreement? Does anyone have any requests of other file types to strip?

I spent more time this morning than I should. I owe. I owe. It's off to
work I go.

I suspect this will spark some conversation. So be it.

Cheers,
Brian
NX9O
the poor sap who volunteered to tend the list server once upon a time...
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