[Mailman-Users] Re: HTML mail

[Dan Wilder]

On Wed, Nov 08, 2000 at 08:56:07PM -0500, Tom Neff wrote:
> If you want to make a convincing argument with numbers, clear out your 
> database, make plain text the default INSTEAD of having HTML the default, 
> load 'em up and send us that results table.  I bet your majority would 
> swing solidly the other way.  Most users accept the default rather than 
> risk actively making "a choice," and would probably accept Esperanto 
> rendered into GIF images by default if that's what you gave them.

[ ... ]

We run a number of email lists available in html and text.  
Signup defaults to text, but users can check the html box.

The lists are Linux-oriented and technical, so we may assume the 
subscribers are reading them with a pretty fair variety of mailers, 
probably including Netscape email clients, Mutt, Pine, as well as Eudora,
Outlook, whatever's popular now on Mac, and who knows what else!
We have quite a few aol subscribers, who seem to split between the
text and the html versions.

I'm not at liberty to share the numbers, except to say subscriptions
run more than four and less than six digits per list.  The lists
run pretty close to 60% text subscribers, 40% html.  This despite
subscribers having to act to request html.

On the html lists, we don't attach additional headers or footers,
nor is it likely we would, unless the list server was quite adapt
at adding MIME attachments without error.

The text lists have html postings converted on the way in using 
lynx -dump, and in addition, footers are attached.

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 Dan Wilder <dan at ssc.com>     Technical Manager & Correspondent
 SSC, Inc. P.O. Box 55549     Phone:  206-782-7733 x123
 Seattle, WA  98155-0549      URL    http://www.linuxjournal.com/
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