Comment from a rookie:
Perhaps the IETF, eminent body that it is, could put out somethng that
RECOMMENDs that email software vendors display the size of email
attachments and maybe the time it would take to download on an analog
modem? Then at least the information is there to see. Otherwise a user
has no clue that a problem might exist. I can't see that a software vendor
would have any motivation to provide that information unless someone
asked/told them to.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael H. Warfield [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 1999 12:21 PM
To: J. Noel Chiappa
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Email messages: How large is too large?
On Thu, Dec 16, 1999 at 04:30:25PM -0500, J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > From: Jon Knight <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > sending an email with a large Word attachment to all 15000 users on
> > campus isn't a good idea as our mail servers will melt. ...
especially
> > from non-academic departments who are used to doing paper based
mass
> > mailings to students. ... depite us offering to put the Word
document
> > on a web page and then send a small email pointing at it
> This is an important distinction to make, between sending a large item to
one
> person who know's it's coming (which I view as an acceptable way to
transfer
> something from one person to another - but more on this below), and
sending
> it to an entire mailing list, most of whom won't be interested in the
item.
> Resources are far better used here by putting the item up for retrieval,
so
> that only those who are interested in it expend the resources to get a
copy.
The only problem with that is that the inDUHviduals who are at the heart of
the problem are the very ones who will have no clue about what that
distinction is. Most of the time, they don't even realize they are sending
a monsterous bloated blob. One person I have in mind knocked her manager
off mail by sending a monster to her entire department and his download
then started timing out. She later asked me "well, just how am I suppose
to tell how big it is in the first place?" One person told me that they
didn't understand why they needed to learn how to something like "zip". It
wasn't important to their jobs so why should they have to learn it.
These are the people we are going to try and tell "you can send it to one
person if they are expecting it but don't send it to a list" (what's a list
- remember aliases) "and they're not". That's only going to trade one
brand of confusion for another.
[...]
> Noel
--
Michael H. Warfield | (770) 985-6132 | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(The Mad Wizard) | (770) 331-2437 | http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
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