[Gllug] in transit trimming email to gllug users WAS WikiLeaks: Stop. . .

[David L Neil]

Justin

>> Tethys (Saturday, December 11, 2010 10:40 AM):
>>> I'm equally confused... how does a 1 line response merit a 23
>>> line signature? That's really falling down when it comes to
>>> hitting a sane signal to noise ratio...

Sanity vs the imposition of 'corporate standards', plain 
consideration/good-manners losing-out to the arrogant assumption that we 
all have plentiful bandwidth, and in any case an untested (in the legal 
sense) and likely unenforceable practice.


>> Now I realise that I'm being made to look a fool every time I send
>> email outside the company and there's nothing I can do about it. Ho
>>  hum.

Unless you are able to access an alternative SMTP server/email provider 
for 'personal email'.


> From these thoughts I wonder what would it take to create an end of
> email tag which lets the gllug mailserver trim the emails before
> distributing them.
> Can we do this? If so how about we also add the existence of this
> feature on the web site and as part of the reminder emails?
> gllug-mailend
> and when used the line with gllug-mailend and the rest of the email
> would be cropped off.

In fact this has long existed:-

RFC 3676 Text/Plain Format and DelSp Parameters February 2004

"4.3. Usenet Signature Convention There is a long-standing convention in 
Usenet news which also commonly appears in Internet mail of using "-- " 
as the separator line between the body and the signature of a message."
...
  http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3676

Unfortunately we are using an email discussion list which, only to a 
degree, emulates features from Usenet (eg 1-m without knowing all 
members' personal addresses).

Some email clients still support the convention. However it is 
interesting to note that the Mozilla 'support' area (for example) is 
littered with regular enquiries on the theme: "how do I get rid of the 
ugly dash-dash above my SIG"?

Of course the advent of the 'pretty', duplicative HTML email format 
scores on the negative side of every choice illustrated above, and 
wiped-out any pretense that re-mailer systems would be able to make 
sensible use of such a convention (although removing every MIME block 
except the first Text/Plain might be fun!)

Regards,
=dn
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