[TriLUG] Why the message size limit? [Was: Your message to TriLUG awaits moderator approval]

[Cristóbal Palmer via TriLUG]

On 6/7/18 4:00 PM, Brian via TriLUG wrote:
> 
> Realistically, this issue bothers me approximately never, but here are
> my thoughts on the subject anyway. :-)

While this is likely meant as humor, it reads as disdain for the time I
took to write up my memories and/or anyone who would actually do careful
data collection.

> As it applies to attachments causing the size limit to be hit, couldn't
> the system that checks size limit requirements be smart enough to treat
> text/plain (or even, $deity forbid, text/html) MIME types differently
> from application/* types when deciding how big the message is?
>
> i.e. Aaron Joyner's 25 kB information-rich text shouldn't be graded the
> same way as joe_blow's 162 bytes of text plus 24 kB of image attachment.

I encourage you to research the MLM (mailing list manager... not
multi-level marketing) options that are available today[0] to see if
there is one that makes this eas(y|ier). After cursory investigation,
mailman 3 and Sympa seem like reasonable things to investigate.

> That doesn't address the concern of huge text sections that are 1%
> original and 99% quoted, of course, but I wonder how often the size
> limit actually comes into play in practice, when dealing with that.

That is a question that can only be answered properly by sampling the
moderation queue, so you'll need to work with the SC if you want a real
answer there.

> As far as digest subscribers, well, they signed up for a digest.
> Sometimes threads are long.  Caveat emptor, I say.

This sounds like disdain again. I encourage you to try only consuming
this list via digest for a month to see if you still feel the same way.

> As far as archival storage, give me a break. [snip] Archiving
> is not the problem.

If attachments weren't stripped, this wouldn't hold. As the list is
currently configured, you're right that stripping attachments makes the
message size limit as storage overflow prevention moot.

But again, storage size is only part of the argument with the archives,
and the more important part is that pipermail is Not Good. Our config is
one workaround. I'm not claiming its the best one, but it does have the
value of not leaving gaps in the archive.

> OTOH, how about simply raising the limit to 50 kB?

While this is an option, I'll ask one more time that folks get a bit
more curious and maybe invest a bit of energy in wrestling with harder
and more broad questions, like how can we make this the best possible
discussion list that reaches and includes the most people?

Yours,
--
Cristóbal Palmer

[0] Could start here:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mailing_list_software>