I recently received this and thought I would pass it along for people who think I might be overly sensitive about PLAIN TEXT messages to Rootsweb mail lists. Mine is not the only one experiencing the problem. All the lists experience it from time to time. It's our job as listowners to make others aware of some problems, alleviate them, and make it better for all. Rhio From: Glen <glen@ldscn.com> To: <genealogy@ldscn.com> Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2001 1:16 PM Subject: [GENEALOGY] Some list questions I recently received the following message, and felt that a response to this list would be appropriate. A subscriber wrote: "I am a little confused about how this [list] works. I am receiving lots of "garbled" messages that I cannot read. I am not computer literate enough to know how to adjust my e-mail settings to read the garbled messages. Or I receive postings with the previous postings going back 3 or 4 messages in a chain. Or I read a posting that has a question with answers from some of the [users] - when I haven't even seen the question yet! Is there something I need to do?" 1. The garbled messages are garbled because people who post messages have their mailer program settings set incorrectly. Everyone who uses a list should have their mailer set to: a. Send PLAIN TEXT ONLY. b. Convert Rich Text/Formatted text to Plain Text. c. Disallow MIME messages, Rich Text messages, Formatted messages. Since these are generally not the defaults, and people don't pay attention to our FAQ, this generally doesn't happen. Since each mailer program uses "its own" formatting codes (in an attempt to become "the industry standard") other people see garbled stuff. 2. She cannot adjust her mailer to read garbled mail, only to keep from sending garbled mail. If everyone made such an adjustment, all would be well. Alas, they don't. 3. The postings with previous postings included are again the fault of the senders. People should know that when they reply to a message, they need to NOT INCLUDE the replied-to message text... or, at most, include only one or two lines that might be relevant. But, again, people don't pay attention to our FAQ. They don't pay attention at all, and don't connect with the fact that everyone already read the message that they are now re-sending to the whole list. We actually have people who send one- or two-line replies to a single message that appeared in a digest, and they resend the ENTIRE DIGEST TO THE LIST. Unbelievable, but despite all our attempts to get people to pay attention, they still refuse. 4. As for reading postings with questions they haven't seen yet, there's nothing we can do. What happens often is that someone will ask someone a question privately (off-list), and the answering party thinks that the response would be useful to the whole list, so they send the response to the whole list - which is good, because the information is relevant - but they forget to send the question. I'm going to do this with this message, but I'll include some of the question so people know why I'm sending this answer. The person who asked the original questions touches nicely on the major problems we all experience with lists. It is my hope that everyone will take some time to read this message, read our FAQ, and become educated. This will make the list experience better for everyone. Glen ===================================================================== Check out the help desk at Rootsweb if you haven't checked your e-mail preferences or options. http://helpdesk.rootsweb.com/help/html-off.html