for one, for some people bandwidth and downloading time is in short supply AND it's costly. i've had to resort to non=broadband service and i had forgotten how damn long it takes to download mail. i used to have an att. acct with 5 hrs of online time a month. anything over that was a buck per hour. it adds up. people who are overseas also pay by the minute. when a link could be sent, with perhaps a short quote, that is just called being considerate.
two, it costs doug money. granted, if he'd get in gear he could host it elsewhere for far cheaper. but, for now, sending redundant k's jacks up the cost of running this service. yes, i know i'm guilty of overposting and jacking up the k's. it is, however, largely original stuff, my writing, whereas the forwarding of quotes and articles that are clearly and readily available on the web is simply wasting k's.
the transmission of k's costs money. even were doug to host it at infothecary.org for free, it's costing someone, somewhere, somehow money.
the forwards can still do you a service, except that they in the form of a link. you will not lose out if the forward maven provides a link, instead.
three, for those who, like barry, get the digest, it is a MAJOR pain to read. i've gotten digests in the past. they're a pain, especially when the digests are full of text copied, cut and pasted form the internet. when someone does that, it often means the text is full of HTML tags making it a real PIA to read.
work arounds:
1. forward mavens can include in their posts an offer to send entire article to those, like elena, who don't have web access. those folks can write yoshie if they want the article. i've done this MANY times on other lists who STRONGLY discourage the kind of thing that you're encouraging.
2. forward mavens who want to scan or hand type extensive amts of text (when scanned also often emit gobbledygood) can learn how to use the webhost space provided them by their internet service provider. most universities have free web space for students (learning how to slap up a web page is imperative these days) and most commercial ISP's provide plenty of web space for the service. there are also loads of free web hosting sites: anglefire, geocities, etc.
At 04:38 PM 12/21/00 -0500, you wrote:
>BARRY!