From: ietf <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx> on behalf of Vasilenko Eduard <vasilenko.eduard=40huawei.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: 21 August 2023 07:28 Dear IETF Police, If you would continue to ban HTML then please do it in a more specific way: 1. Reject the message (with sender notification). Or 2. Convert it to text (with some information lost). <tp> None of the above. Given multipart/alternative with text/plain and text/html, remove the text/html in its entirety, something the mail list exploder could readily do. And mail direct from participant to participant would still have the html for those who want it. I only know of one person who sends e-mail in text/html only - a WG Chair! - and I can cope with the loss of such messages. Tom Petch p.p. The Campaign to Get the Work Done The current way (the chair should release/reject the message manually) is for sure the worst method to ban technology, automation is very needed. RFC on "IETF HTML banning rules" would be good to have because it is a way to have a "consensus". IMHO about top posting: It is a very right way to copy sentences that should be commented on the top. The rest of the message is better to keep below for context. PS: By the way, why IETF mail server deletes all empty line? Not possible to separate different messages. Even more, if the previous line is finished without a dot or comma then lines would be merged. What is wrong with empty lines?!? Even minimal mark-up is not possible. Eduard -----Original Message----- From: ietf [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christian Huitema Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2023 8:49 PM To: John R Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxxx>; tom petch <daedulus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; ietf@xxxxxxxx Subject: Re: The IETF's email mess [was: RE: Large messages to 6man list] On 8/20/2023 8:37 AM, John R Levine wrote: >> Either the IETF should strip all html before forwarding e-mails to a >> list, or webmail providers should be REQUIRED to provide an option to >> display only text/plain and to suppress any text/html (just like all >> MUA that I have ever had the privilege to use have offered me). > > REQUIRED? Um, I think the Network Police are currently on summer vacation. John, we would not need Internet-wide policing to enforce text only contributions to the IETF mailing lists. We would need some kind of processor to only forward messages if they are encoded in text/plain, or maybe to something more complicated and only forward the text/plain rendering of the contribution. And appropriate error messages going back to contributors of non-forwardable messages. Of course, that may or may not be a good idea. It would certainly add a barrier of entry, making contributions harder, and possibly discouraging newcomers. It would also not prevent people from alternating between top-posting and in-line commenting, and it would not prevent different MUA from adopting incompatible conventions for in-line commenting. -- Christian Huitema
