AOL incoming mail used to be truncated at about 27K. This has been fixed,
sort of -- larger messages are split into multiple messages. A kludge, but
at least it all gets delivered.
The newsreader is a different matter. The problem is in the client software.
Using the Windows client, trying to read an article longer than about 30K
causes a crash. With the Mac client, you can read parts of the article, but
if you try to save the entire article to read offline you only get the last
25K. AOL apparently admits this is a bug rather than a feature and will
eventually get around to fixing it. AOL users are quite aware that the
problem is an AOL bug and are complaining loudly.
My FAQ is almost 70K and I've had no complaints about the size, from AOL or
elsewhere. Like others, I have limits as to what I'll do to work around
broken newsreaders. I may very well split the FAQ, but it will be for the
convenience of the human readers, not for the software.
Tom Galloway writes:
> However, this nagging
> voice in my head does keep reminding me about the sheer volume of clueless
> newbies from [AOL] who do need as much guidance as we can give them...
My, ain't prejudice fun?
I've seen no reason to believe that the rate of cluelessness among AOL users
is anywhere close to as high as the average fall freshman class. Ahhhh ...
it sure feels good to flame MY favorite target.
As I pointed out in a lengthy review of the AOL interface that I posted to
news.admin.policy a couple of months ago, a lot of the complaints directed
at AOL users' behavior should be directed at AOL software instead. In
particular:
-- a "Send Reponse" button that actually posts a followup,
and no button for Reply
-- no offline reader -> pay for think time -> little thought
-- the oddly formatted quotes are a result of no quote capability
in the software
And the first to notice these errors and omissions were all those
clueless AOL newbies, who've been complaining to AOL about all these
issues, especially the lack of an offline reader, from day one.
-- Edward Reid ed@titipu.resun.com (normal) PO Box 378 Edward_Reid@acm.org (forwarding) Greensboro FL reide@freenet.fsu.edu (seldom checked)
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