[gmx-developers] Mails rejected with "The message's content type was not explicitly allowed"

[Justin Lemkul]

On 7/19/12 6:56 PM, Mark Abraham wrote:
> On 5/07/2012 11:24 PM, Rossen Apostolov wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Recently the Gromacs mailing lists have been used for sending spam and
>> viruses, and thus now only plain text messages are accepted.
>>
>> If you have received rejected mails saying "The message's content type was not
>> explicitly allowed" it means that you have used in your mail special styles or
>> formatting (e.g. bold typeface, colors etc.).
>>
>> Check your email client settings about how to send messages as plain text,
>> e.g. in GMail make sure to click on "Compose -> Plain Text". Check also
>> whether a formatted signature is added.
>>
>> Attachments are also not allowed but you could include links for downloads.
>>
>> Rossen
>>
>>
>
> Bump.
>
> I'm happy banning attachments (there's lots of free upload space out there), but
> think that explicitly requiring plain text email is a significant barrier to
> participation. Some web mail clients don't permit a non-HTML mime type - that's
> not our fault but we have to live in that jungle. Some people will walk away
> without bothering to find out if they can configure plain text email. Others
> will judge the technical competence of the team on their ability to run the
> mailing list. If we need to outsource it somewhere, we should do that.
>
> Mark
>
>

I agree with Mark here.  It seems to me that traffic to the list has been down 
for a couple of weeks relative to normal, but there may be other factors for 
that.  What I do know is that I'm getting increasing amounts of emails to my 
personal inbox starting with "I can't post to the Gromacs list, so I'm sending 
this to you..."  That's an increased burden I'm not willing to bear.  I'm all 
for community contributions (you all know that ;) but as soon as it becomes my 
responsibility to handle Gromacs issues, I'm less inclined.

-Justin

-- 
========================================

Justin A. Lemkul, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
Department of Biochemistry
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA
jalemkul[at]vt.edu | (540) 231-9080
http://www.bevanlab.biochem.vt.edu/Pages/Personal/justin

========================================