I think it might be appropriate to remind members of this list of the 
guidelines for the use of mailbase, particularly the point which 
advises against the sending of attachments to the list. See

http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/docs/guidelines.html#no-attachments

(i) if they are in a proprietary format, you can't be sure that the 
recipients will be able to read them - not everyone uses That Word 
Processing program, and certainly not the most recent version of it. 
It is more dependable to insert the information as text in the body 
of your message; it only takes a small amount of effort and all that 
is sacrificed is some formatting. If you want people to see a prettier 
version of the document then perhaps you could either point them 
to a web site from which they can download a formatted document 
_if_ they choose to, or ask them to email you off-list to request an 
individual copy.

(ii) versions of documents encoded in proprietary formats often end 
up much larger than a simple text version embedded in the body of 
the message - I recently received a set of attachments which my 
mail program informs me totalled 179K. I'm fortunate to work in an 
institution where that doesn't overload our local servers; others may 
not be in that position. (Indeed some individuals may be paying 
directly for the download of their email.) Think of that 179K 
multiplied by the number of members of this list, and you begin to 
see why networks become overloaded.

(iii) certain proprietary formats are a primary means by which virus 
programs are transmitted around networks.

(iv) the list archive software may not be able to handle attachments 
in proprietary formats, so all that is archived is the "Please see 
attached document" message text with no "attached document" to 
accompany it.

I'm fairly sure the list administrators could set the list configuration 
so that attachments received at mailbase were simply discarded, 
but I guess they (quite reasonably, I think) recognise that in some 
cases it may be a necessary option, and so they rely on an 
element of "self-regulation" by us as list members.

Thanks

Pete



Pete Johnston
Glasgow University Archives & Business Records Centre


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