At 02:43 PM 1/5/00 -0500, [log in to unmask] wrote:

[snip]

>In any case, removing an attachment will probably result in lots of
>people complaining "I can't read the attachment, it seems to be
>missing".  You will even get complaints from people who usually don't
>like attachments.

Presumably the software would remove/fix the MIME headers that indicate an
attachment is present.  Also, an appended one line text note that an
attachment was removed would probably stave off complaints (which would
only come from those who don't read your welcome message/FAQ/whatever).
By the way, onelist already does both of these things when a listowner
selects their no-attachments option.

>Re-inserting a modified stream may get you into serious trouble -
>consult a qualified lawyer regarding your liability.  That's just a
>little *too* close to real-time revisionism, and probably worse than
>simply rejecting/bouncing the note back with some explanitory text of
>why it wasn't posted to the list.

No problem; you just make it your visible list policy not to publish
attachments but to remove them.  It's sort of like writing a letter
to the editor where they tell you they may condense what you write...
except *that* is more subjective than this would be.

>And rememer - attachments aren't *inherently* evil, there was a REASON
>why MIME was ever invented.  Those of us who were around in the pre-MIME
>days remember 'uuencode' and all the OTHER ad-hackery that MIME was
>designed to fix.....

I don't think anyone claimed they're inherently evil; it's a matter
of whether they belong on a given mailing list or not.  For many
mailing lists -- especially those for discussion -- attachments are
against list policy (as, no doubt would be, uuencoding an enclosed file).
And some of the WORST attachments today are those inserted by
mail clients which don't even make it clear to those using them that
they are doing this ("vcards" and multipart/alternative with HTML
come to mind).

PGP signatures probably require separate consideration but I'm
not going there today :-)

Cheers,
Stan