On Oct 8, 2004, at 2:33, Peter wrote:
I get the list in digest form. When someone addresses a question to
tech-support I don't mind too much but when accompanied by 8000 lines
of
data that most of us have no interest in I draw the line. I can't
simply
delete it as I lose everything following. I also have a problem with
MIME
format which is garbage on my Blackberry.
I suggest that we have a limit on the number of lines - say 100 to
200. If
such postings were returned to sender with a reason our list would be
more
effective. It would also have the effect of limiting lengthy back and
forth
with tremendous useless redundancy.
I think this is an excessively Draconian solution, although I have
great sympathy with Peter's concerns. The recent repeated postings of
the same hundreds of lines of data (which evoked no responses the
first, second or third time) are inappropriate. But so is WinJunk --
people attaching vCards in binary format, or HTML-formatted email, etc.
and all are proscribed in the FAQ.
Perhaps the most obvious change that should be made (I too read the
digest) is the removal of 95% of a past exchange in forming a reply. (I
did not do that here, but then this is an original reply). There is no
need, given the accessibility of Statalist archives, to include the
entire contents of a thread in every re-posting.
The proposed solution -- a drastic restriction on message length--would
require reprogramming of the Statalist parameters on Marcello's part.
At present, a too-long message is just ignored, not returned to sender.
I have empirically determined in formulating my monthly SSC reports
that the limit is somewhere around 17K bytes. I agree with Peter that
this is probably too large, and I think a restriction to 10K bytes
would be reasonable if it is feasible for Marcello to return excessive
messages to sender. Any returns should include an abbreviated
exhortation of The Rules. (By comparison this entire message is about
2K bytes).
Kit Baum, Boston College Economics [email protected]
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
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