I do not know what Mr. Mills lists are like, nor whom they are intended
for, maybe all his list subscribers have the latest gew whiz, nifty neato,
you gotta get this, it is so cool, garbage.

My thousands of subscribers happen to be all over the world.  I am to tell
this person in Nigeria, with antique equipent and minimal net access,
sorry, come back when you have the latest gimcracks?   Not this listowner.

I don't see it as "dumbing down," rather as "wising up."  The latest
frills don't enhance the information, which is contained in the text.
All that is needed is the basic text which can be used by virtually
any computer still in operation.  Allowing the pointless frills
eliminates a lot of my subscribers for the benefit of a tiny few.
It also eats up archive space something fierce (we have everything,
nearly ten years of logs) and the archives are much more important
than the glitz.  Not to mention trying to help a subscriber when
the encodded fru-fru has blown his mail system, sometimes the whole
mail system for the university.

My lists are plain text (no attachments/html/base64/win.dat/enrichment,
etc.) and I have no intention of changing that because my lists are
for all my subsciribers, regardless of the system being used, not for
only those with the latest hot item.

Douglas