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Re: Shotgun Emails

From: Zvi Har'El <rl~at~math.technion.ac.il>
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:27:45 +0300 (IDT)
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~math.technion.ac.il>

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Budelberger Richard wrote:

> Moi, le seul reproche que j'aie jamais fait à Zvi, c'est de ne pas avoir
> filtré les messages accompagnés de « pièces jointes », du genre 400 Ko,
> encore dernièrement, et qui me bloque ma boîte aux lettres pendant 30
> minutes.

Dear Richard, dear Vernian friends,

I will not address the matter that made you Richard quite angry. I just regret
it caused you these emotional reaction. I just wish to address the size probem.

The problem that you Richard poses is serious, and I wish to spend a moment
contemplating on it. It is true, that I have got few complaints about this in
the past, but I am not sure what to do. Majordomo, the mailing-list automaton,
intercepts all messages which are longer then 40,000 characters, and I have to
approve them before distribution. However, in these cases I have the dilemma:
What should I do: it is possible that the attachment is very interesting, and
it is worth while to approve it.

This month, for instance, we had Sean's message, see
http://jv.gilead.org.il/forum/2001/07/0022.html, which had two big attachments.
Together, they where almost an order of magnitude higher than the allowable
size! However, I found it very interesting to see what Sean has to show us, and
many of you will agree, but I suppose that others, with slow internet
connection, were in an awkward situation like Richard waiting for the long
message to download. I have to apologize to you Richard and the rest.

In the past I told you all about the private section of the forum site, where
you can upload files into an "incoming" directory, and if you wish to make the
upload permanent, I can create a directory under your own name and move the
file there. So instead of sending a large attachment, you can either put it in
your own web site (if you are luck to have one) and send the location, or
upload it into my web site and again send the location, and people (who cared
enough to get a jvf web access passowrd), will be able to see it.

My problem is that I don't wish to be a policeman, and when you mail a large
attachment, you always put me on the spot: Should I, or shouldn't I, approve
its distribution!

I think a good solution will be: Send a down-sized version of the image as an
attachment, and whoever likes to see it in all its detailed glory, will go to
the web site. Again, I regret that so far I don't have a better solution (e.g.,
to strip the attachments out of the distributed mail and store them only in the
archive) - I am sure it is possible but I never found time to program it.

Best, and my apologies again for the big files you sometimes get from me,

Zvi.

-- 
Dr. Zvi Har'El     mailto:rl~at~math.technion.ac.il     Department of Mathematics
tel:+972-54-227607                   Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
fax:+972-4-8324654 http://www.math.technion.ac.il/~rl/     Haifa 32000, ISRAEL
"If you can't say somethin' nice, don't say nothin' at all." -- Thumper (1942)
                                   Wednesday, 5 Av 5761, 25 July 2001,  4:50PM

Received on Wed 25 Jul 2001 - 17:28:32 IDT

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