[Fourlanders] Blank Messages and the List Server

[Gordon Macie]

Brian ,

I managed a listman list for awhile and was clueless when anything but the simplest problem arose. It is not user friendly. If I remember right it is written in a modern language (python) but I didn't even try to look at the source code. I read the list email in yahoo and I have been getting a lot of blank emails. I wasn't sure if it was me because yahoo has been unstable lately. I forwarded a couple of them to my gmail account and same thing. You could always transition to yahoo groups or google groups. I have always preferred yahoo groups but lately yahoo seems to be having issues. I am slowing moving my email to hotmail which has improved tremendously the last couple of years.

Gordon N4LR



________________________________
 From: Brian McCarthy <brian at rfacres.com>
To: Fourlanders <fourlanders at contesting.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 6:44 AM
Subject: [Fourlanders] Blank Messages and the List Server
 


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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