> From: "Chris Lewis" <clewis@nortelnetworks.com> > ... > > There are other things the IETF lists should do instead. To start, > > they should rejectm mail with MIME content headers declaring mail is > > not English, and specifically reject JP, KR, and GB character sets. > > The IETF has no foreign language special interest groups? Like on > character sets and internationalization? It would be as dumb as a > pharmaceutical company banning the V word. If there are any IETF working group mailing lists that do not use ASCII-English, then those should be exempted. However, as far as I know, there are no such mailing lists. Because of the nature of the IETF, there I doubt any such WG list should use anything but the global international standard character set. The IETF is supposed to be international, and that means that its official communications must use the international language. That the international email language today happens to involve a national varient of an old international character set is an accident of history that is handy for some of us, unfortunate for others, and unchangable for the foreseeable future for all of us. Test mailing lists, private mail, and so forth are different. > > They should probably also reject any MIME multipart mail, > > That would annoy the Mime, multimedia and other specialized WGs would it > not? Again, the offical IETF mailing lists are supposed to be "inclusive." Contrary to some politically correct silliness, in this case that does not involve pretending everyone understands all languages and formats, but using the greatest common divisor. All IETF mailing lists submissions should use the single, common form everyone involved can read. It could make sense for a mail working group to have a special test mailing list that uses very different protocols than 7-bit plantext ASCII, but the official, archived, public record, subject to the "Note This" blather working group mailing lists are not those. > > I think they should also use the DCC to reject all bulk mail, but > > that's probably only my bias speaking. > > That's a _much_ better idea than banning specific character sets or mime. Maybe so or maybe not. Using the DCC to reject all bulk mail would prune a lot of conference announcements and calls for papers. I think that would be a good thing, but I know others disagree with me. Vernon Schryver vjs@rhyolite.com