> "Either way f--- your sarcasm and take a look at the real issue of email > etiquette." > > Robert - nice that you lecture people on email etiquette while cursing at > them. Unintended irony? Pot calling the kettle black? Anyway....
No, intended, not unintended. I was responding in kind to the hostile and sarcastic tone of the original response, and regret that I escalated it an additional step rather than de-escalated it. It may not have been Donna's intention, and I strongly doubt that what came across in email from either of us accurately represents how the interaction would have gone in person. Sorry. > This was hashed out on the listserv a few months back if I recall, and the > general consensus among people who replied and the list admin was that > attachments should be allowed. Specifically: > > " The position of the list administrator is: > > I'm open to bumping up the size limit to something like 30Mb. This should > allow sending small or medium-sized documents. > But this list isn't really intended for distributing large documents. That was Darin's FIRST response (which in itself states his opinion that the list shouldn't be used for distributing documents), but he sent another message on the topic afterward that was more restrictive. If someone can remind me of the range of dates, it's possible that I might have saved it and can share it with you to bring you up to date. > While I agree that links should be provided when the are available, this isn't 1994, and > attachments are a regular part of email these days and are not considered a violation > of some unwritten etiquette. I readily use attachments for work, volunteer, and personal email when it is appropriate to use email for a file transfer. But just because the capability exists doesn't mean it should be used in all circumstances. The fundamental difference you are apparently failing to comprehend is that you cannot ethically assume that what might be appropriate to do with clients, colleagues, and personal friends is also going to be appropriate for a large list of people you may not know and you may not have much else in common except some shared interest in one or more of a wide variety of issues relating to bicycle transportation. Although you may haughtily dismiss a variety of computing-related concerns as being in some way quaint or antiquated, it is extremely presumptuous for you to assume that none of them should any longer be of concern to anyone else, because, well, because you said so, You don't know that there might not be someone using dialup. You don't know that some email accounts have storage quotas. And it's not enough just to say delete it without opening it, because some harms can be caused just by its being delivered and taking up space on the server if it sits there for a couple days or a couple hours before the nonconsenting recipient of a large and possibly trivial file attachment hasn't had a chance to delete it yet, and then other people trying to email that recipient wonder why there messages are being rejected or are getting "mailbox full" error messages. You don't know what inadvertently infected documents might or might not be caught by a security scan. You don't know if someone else is reading email on a phone that might have a costly data plan. You don't know about many other possible concerns someone might have. With hundreds of people on the list, there are so many things that you just don't know about the hundreds of individual situations that it makes it inappropriate to assume that it's okay to send anything other than a plain text email. If it's a document you found online, just share the URL and have the courtesy to respect the recipient's decision to view or download--or NOT view or download it--rather than just presuming to ram it down everyone else's inboxes. If it's a document you created or that was passed along to you by someone else and you want others on the list to see it (or to have the option to see it), it becomes YOUR responsibility to put it online in some personal file sharing space of yours, such as Dropbox, CX, SkyDrive, UbuntuOne, or whatever else you might use (rather than taking the lazy way out and making the improper assumption that it's okay to indiscriminately send it to everyone), to give the hundreds of others on the list that same option of obtaining a copy or not, as they would have in the situation in which it is already accessible online. Remember, the list members are not your personal friends, clients, or colleagues, so different procedures apply. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
