From: "Ted White" <twhite8 at cox.net>
To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Last Call
Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 22:54:07 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net>
To: <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>; <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 10:08 PM
Subject: [WSFA] Last Call

> I'll be leaving for Noreascon first thing in the morning, so this is
> the last call for anything that should be added to our calendar of
> upcoming events.  (If I can get net access at the con, I'll place the
> location of our meeting online, but I won't be doing any other website
> updates from there.)
>
> I've finally finished placing the '80s WSFA Journals online (and one
> issue from the '70s), just about exactly one year after I finished
> the '90s and started the '80s.  Wade has finished scanning in all the
> Second Series Journals, and I should have the remaining 14 issues up
> by the end of October.  After that, we'll start on the First Series,
> the Don Miller issues.  (Does anyone have his issue #85 or later?)
>
> But not until we've produced the September issue.  For which more
> submissions are needed.  I've got tons of stuff from Lee Strong,
> several cartoons from Alexis, and one item from Colleen, but nothing
> else that I didn't write myself.  And just two weeks after the
> September issue comes out, so will the October issue.
>
> People are continuing to email WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net.  Since these
> people clearly won't update their address books before the heat death
> of the universe, I've brought back that address, and come up with an
> alternate way of avoiding duplicate messages.  If you see two (or
> zero) copies of this message, it didn't work.
>
> People are also continuing to send HTML email to the list.  It would
> be far more work to try to automatically un-HTML a message, and I
> don't plan to do it.  Nobody should ever be sending HTML email to
> anyone, except by prearrangement.  Since 99.99% of HTML email is spams
> or viruses, and the remaining 00.01% is still an ugly mess of angle
> brackets and ampersands, most people and most ISPs delete all such
> email unread.  So just don't do it.

Oh, come on, Keith.  A really Large Number of perhaps clueless people (the
vast majority having AOL accounts) routinely send HTML email to their
friends and relatives, often with photos tucked in.   So common are such
emails that Yahoo!Groups (which has the largest number -- many thousands --
of listservs) encourages its lists to use HTML-enriched email so that it
can append full-color ads to each message.  (Plain text messages no longer
rate any ads at all!)

In simple fact, most people with either Apples or PCs with modern operating
systems and modern email clients do not experience "an ugly mess of angle
brackets and ampersands."   They experience an email with different,
perhaps odd, fonts and type colors, the inclusion of Italics and boldface,
and whatever else the sender uses.  (One correspondent of mine routinely
uses a photo as his "letterhead.")   Nor do "most people and most ISPs
delete all such email unread."   Why should they, if it's from a friend or
relative?

You're living in a world at least ten years in the past -- maybe fifteen.
That's your privilege, but it's unrealistic of you to assume others are
following your lead -- or would want to.

--Ted White