On Wednesday, February 26, 2025 11:21:42 AM MST Soren Stoutner wrote: > The purpose of this email is to propose that the expectation that emails > should be wrapped at 80 characters when they are sent should be dropped.
This email has sparked an interesting discussion, which is what I was hoping for. So far, I would summarize the points made as follows. 1. It would be really cool if all MUAs supported format=flowed, but they don’t, and we shouldn’t require special software to interact with the Debian mailing lists. 2. Some MUAs don’t wrap text correctly with their default values, but so far they all seem to have settings that support it. 3. Some people find it difficult to read long lines of text, but they can adjust their viewing windows or display settings to make the lines shorter if they like. 4. Some people just don’t like change, but do not provide an argument for maintaining things at the status quo. > Currently, the code of conduct for the mailing lists says: > > "Wrap your lines at 80 characters or less for ordinary discussion. Lines > longer than 80 characters are acceptable for computer-generated output (e.g., > ls -l).” > > https://www.debian.org/MailingLists/ Given the above four points, I propose the line from the code of conduct quoted above be changed to read: “There is no expectation that emails sent to the mailing lists are wrapped by the sender at a particular column, but those sending emails may wrap them if they choose.” I like this wording because it does not prevent people from wrapping their emails if they want. Although I think the superior options for the entire ecosystem would be that no emails are wrapped by the sender, I can imagine there are users who need to interact with other ecosystems which require wrapped emails, and forcing them to switch their settings back and forth when communicating with Debian would be inconsiderate. Therefore, I feel the above wording is fair for everyone. -- Soren Stoutner so...@debian.org
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