Email attachments are not archived.
Allen Hopkins, 7 Apr 2003
Last updated: 7 Apr 2003

Mail sent to most of the workgroup mail lists is archived for future reference. (For example, the archive for the gsrc mail list can be viewed at http:/www.gigascale.org/gsrc/listinfo/gsrc/, or by using the navigation links at the top of the page.)

However, attachments to email messages are not archived. This is so that large attachments, such as Powerpoint presentations and MS Word documents, can be shared among list members via email, without incurring the expense of storing them on disk each time they are sent.

While disk space is cheap, and getting cheaper, the cost of backing up disk content is expensive. For this reason, the size of messages that are archived is limited to 40 kilobytes. Dropping the attachments before archiving allows users to share large files, via attachments, without encountering this limitation.