Re: [EAI] Shepherd report review of mailinglist-02

["John R Levine" <[e-mail]>]

OK, I've posted an -03 that I think takes into consideration everyone's 
comments.  The comment that lists are inanimate messages while list agents 
are software was a good one, that let me go through and make the document 
(I think) considerably clearer.

Just so you don't think I ignored you:

> FWIW, I've never seen a large list handled by putting hundreds
> of messages into a single SMTP envelope and handing off to a
> conventional submission server.

It's quite common now, e.g., one of Mailman's normal config options.

> In a world in which we encourage explicit confirmation as part
> of an email subscription process for other reasons (ones with
> which you are thoroughly familiar), putting something that
> requires SMTPUTF8 handling into the automated confirmation
> message would not be burdensome.

I didn't do that for two reasons.  One is that while requiring signup 
confirmation usually a good idea, there are real situations where it's not 
needed, and this is the wrong place to argue about list policies.  Also, 
this could apply to lists where the manager is upgrading an existing list 
to EAI, and getting all of a list's subscribers to reconfirm is, ah, 
challenging.  So it mentions it as an option, not as advice.

> We've essentially said that in-transit message downgrading is
> impossible unless the message contains no non-ASCII addresses
> and has non-ASCII material only in header fields in which
> encoded words can be used.  Absent a whole series of provisions
> that you haven't discussed, a mailing list exploder is in no
> better shape to downgrade messages for ASCII-only recipients
> than a relay.

Already discussed later on, added references.

Regards,
John Levine, [e-mail], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
"I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.