I am new to this list so excuse me for interjecting, but I run a
number of small mailing lists with a total of about 3000 subscribers.
One of the lists is pretty high traffic with as many as 300 to 500
messages a day during September and October.
I have been dealing with the HTML problem for a couple of years now.
I find that HTML causes problems for some user's email clients, it
causes problems for digest readers, problems in that it can carry
viruses, and problems for my archives. I am sure I am preaching to
the choir here.
A couple of years ago, I wrote an AppleScript to just bounce HTML
formatted messages with instructions on how to turn HTML off in
Outlook Express. This has pretty much solved my problem and my users
love it this way. A month ago, I upgraded my system and had trouble
with the script for a few weeks and I got numerous complaints that it
was not rejecting HTML messages any more. Thank heavens I found the
problem.
I started getting reports of AOL 6.0 problems a week or two ago and
had the AOL users contact AOL support. I got this response back from
one of my users:
"I spoke again to the aohell tech support people. They have
admitted it is a problem with there software and will fix
the problem in a few weeks when they update the software.
I guess in the meantime my best bet is to get a hotmail
account."
And other users reported that AOL recommended that they switch back
to 5.0 for a few weeks till the problem was fixed and a patch was
available.
I have read many of the archive posts on this topic, and while I
agree that AOL is an 800 Pound Gorilla, you also must remember that
they have an 8000 Pound User Base, and even if 1 percent of them
complain, the 800 Pound Gorilla gets a big headache.
As to Chuq's argument that my users will find it onerous and move to
another mailing list, I have not found this to be the case. My lists
are growing steadily every year and people seem to like the way I run
my lists.
I do have one list that gets business correspondence. I exclude that
list from the HTMLreject filter since messages to that list can come
from anywhere and the 5 people on that list can handle the HTML. But
that is just a matter of setting your filter to allow what you want
in and disallow what you do not. -Chuck-
--
__________________________________________________________________________
Chuck Rice <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
<http://www.wildrice.com/>
