[X-Newbies] (OT) Your message to X-Newbies awaits moderator approval.

[Vincent Cayenne]

At 10:32 PM +0200 4/24/06, Brian Durant wrote:
>5 KB is totally unrealistic. It is very much the norm on most tech 
>related e-mail lists and in many cases necessary to maintain the 
>thread properly as it progresses. This isn't a bandwidth issue 
>either. Listmom could just keep those footers off every mail if it 
>is so important to stay under 5 KB.

No, listmoms typically encourage the members to trim and quote 
responsibly and sensibly. It's not a bandwidth issue, but a courtesy 
issue. It *is* very much the norm on tech SUPPORT threads between 
manufacturer or developer and the user or consumer to maintain the 
full thread as it progresses. And to top-post in that context. But on 
email lists, tech-related or not, that is emphatically NOT the norm.

I just did a quick check - I've membership on some eight dozen lists 
of which seventy are inarguably "tech-oriented". Only about five of 
them operate in the manner you consider the norm. And those are run 
in a bug-report-and-fix, feature-add-and-trouble-shoot manner that 
very much resembles the developer/user tech support model.

Lists such as this usually just encourage/enforce good email list 
netiquette as it applies to quoting and trimming. Of more than 8000 
posts on this list from 2003 to now, less than 400 have been greater 
than 5K. I've never known of the rule and have seen posts larger than 
5K as recently as December 2005. And having just had a look at a 
couple of those, I can see why a limit might then have been quietly 
imposed.
-- 
'tis as said. [Reality is defined by being described]