[opensuse] Re: Why does this list permit attachments?

On Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:48:09 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:

On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:09:48 -0400, Felix Miata wrote:

On 2009/04/23 22:00 (GMT) Jim Henderson composed:

I use gmane to read the list

Then you're not actually using an email program, you're using a web
browser. Ordinary POP accounts used by people running common email
software AFAIK don't allow pre-determining what to download or not.

So out of idle curiosity, I ran some statistics on the composition of
this list.

In my analysis, I used 8,417 posts pulled from gmane. Since gmane
munges sender information and doesn't include source IP information, I
have only looked at the percentages by user agent.

Of the 8,417 messages analyzed, 70% (nearly 6,000) of them were sent
using Thunderbird or KMail.

The breakdown is as follows:

Thunderbird 2987 35.49%
KMail 2888 34.31%
Alpine 697 8.28%
Mozilla 665 7.90%
Mutt 527 6.26%
KNode 253 3.01%
SquirrelMail 149 1.77%
Pan 67 0.80%
Gnus 47 0.56%
Opera 34 0.40%
Turnpike 33 0.39%
Wanderlust 27 0.32%
Spicebird 14 0.17%
Internet_Messaging_Program 8 0.10%
Microsoft-Entourage 7 0.08%
slrn 5 0.06%
Mozilla-Thunderbird 4 0.05%
Icedove 2 0.02%
RoundCube 2 0.02%
Loom 1 0.01%

As you can see, Thunderbird & KMail users are at least the most
prolific. It's hard to profile what everyone is using to read (so this
analysis does leave the lurkers out).

But perhaps this can help frame the discussion in more concrete terms
rather than making assumptions that attachments are a bad thing. At
least based on post traffic, it seems most users of this list who post
are using programs that can pull POP headers without pulling the message
content.

Have to run out for a bit, but when I'm back, maybe I'll see if I can
break the senders down it a reasonable analysis.

Using the same data, I counted about 437 unique users (about 30 use two
or more programs), and the breakdown looks like this:

UA Count Percent
Thunderbird 209 44.75%
KMail 163 34.90%
Mozilla 31 6.64%
Mutt 23 4.93%
SquirrelMail 7 1.50%
Alpine 6 1.28%
Opera 6 1.28%
KNode 4 0.86%
Wanderlust 3 0.64%
Gnus 2 0.43%
Internet_Messaging_Program 2 0.43%
RoundCube 2 0.43%
slrn 2 0.43%
Icedove 1 0.21%
Loom 1 0.21%
Microsoft-Entourage 1 0.21%
Mozilla-Thunderbird 1 0.21%
Pan 1 0.21%
Spicebird 1 0.21%
Turnpike 1 0.21%

So even based on user preferences (based on the same headers), based on
posting, Thunderbird and KMail are still the primarly clients used by the
majority of the posting members of the list.

What does this mean?

Assuming they're using POP access, the majority of the active
participants on this list (nearly 80%) have the ability to control
whether or not a message is downloaded by their client.

At least 9 of us use Newsreaders and gmane.

Those who don't want to be burdened with downloading every message that
may have an attachment has several options to avoid doing this if they so
desire. Another option might be to use the digest version of the list (I
don't know if attachments are sent through the digests or not, I would
hope not).

Let's think about your argument for a minute, Felix. You're contending
that everyone shouldn't be forced to download attachments that are sent
to the list (we'll ignore for the moment that nobody's forced to download
any attachment unless they choose to use software that doesn't give them
the option).

The total line count in those 8417 messages is is roughly (without the
headers) 343,171, with the shortest message being 1 line and the longest
being 4660, but only 16 messages of that total having more than 1000
lines.

Assume each message as it comes through the gmane gateway has an average
line length of 75 characters.

That works out to about 24-25 MB of data for over 8400 messages
(excluding attachments).

The oldest message in the data set is dated July 17, 2008. So not quite
a year's worth of messages from this list.

If people want to cut down on the amount of data transferred, there are
several options:

1. Use a program that doesn't require you download all messages you read.

2. Trim your quoting to a reasonable length. That means (among other
things) don't quote a 1000 line message to add "I agree" at the end.

3. If you have something to say, make sure it's relevant to the list and
on topic - and be succinct. (Yeah, I know, "succinct" is not something
I'm particularly good at myself ;-) )

4. If you're really concerned about bandwidth usage, use a news reader
and gmane (news.gmane.org).

5. (Not generally a big deal on this list but maybe worth mentioning)
Don't send HTML messages to the list.

6. If you're posting a log file or other attachment, look at the size
first and if it seems like a lot of data, trim it to relevant dates/times
at a minimum, and if it still seems too big, ask for help determining
what is relevant before sending it.

I think you'll find that most if not all of these points are already
covered in the general list etiquette already.

One of the challenges people who are posting logs to the list have is
knowing what's relevant. If, as someone who is helping out, you need a
logfile from someone who's asking a question, help them determine what's
relevant and what isn't and tell them what to include. Don't just say
"give me your zmd-messages log file". If that file's 200 MB there are
going to be many upset users on the list. Unless you know the person
you're helping out *really* well, assume they don't know what's relevant
and tell them.

Jim
--
Jim Henderson
Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits

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