[Mimedefang] Rewarding plaintext

[Cormack, Ken]

Perhaps the solution would be for more and more admins to set their
originating servers to strip HTML from all OUTBOUND mail.  For example,
Exchange (:: yuk ::) can do this.  Other email platforms can do it, as well.

Users can gripe all the want about denying them inbound HTML mail.  But how
can they validate their demands when they see that no HTML goes out either?
Perhaps when they realize that their own outbound mail does not suffer from
being HTML-free, they'll quit complaining.   ie: when their intended
recipients DONT call to complain "Hey, how come you never send me scrolling,
bold, red text in heading-1 size, in some goofy unreadable font, against
some equally repulsive background image or color?"

When enough SENDING servers stop allowing OUTBOUND html, the fight to deny
INBOUND html would be so much easier.

Just a thought.

Ken

-----Original Message-----
From: Graham Dunn [mailto:gdunn at inscriber.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 11:29 AM
To: mimedefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com
Subject: Re: [Mimedefang] Rewarding plaintext


On Thu, Oct 16, 2003 at 09:16:19AM -0400, David F. Skoll wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Cormack, Ken wrote:
> 
> > On a busy server, it is possible your "nice pool" could remain full for
> > several days.  How many times would you plan on tempfailing an
HTML-based
> > message?  If you keep tempfailing the same message every time, the
sending
> > server would eventually expire the message, undelivered after x-number
of
> > days, etc.
> 
> Another option would be to record a hash of all the messages received,
> and allow plaintext ones through immediately, but tempfail HTML ones
> "n" times, where n is a small number that depends on how much penalty you
> wish to apply.  (The hash lets you key the counter to the message.)
> 
> Of course, this means that you server will consume n times the usual
bandwidth
> to process HTML messages, so you hurt yourself as much as (or more than)
> senders of HTML messages.
> 
> Yet another option would be to shunt HTML messages into a queue where they
> sit (consuming disk space, but not CPU time) for a specified time, after
> which they are delivered.  This would add a constant delay for all HTML
> messages.

And perhaps there's a MIME type that would signal outlook to deliver
a mild electric shock through the keyboard when it opened an HTML
message.

Given the near-religious fervour that some of the users around here
have for HTML mail, I think aversion therapy via electrocution has a
higher probability of success.

Alternatively, material rewards for good behaviour:
"Good user, sent the memo in plain text. You get a pellet."

Graham
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