Some posts in the archives look like a garbled mess. What is this?
These posts were probably created in the “utf-8” character set in the original sender’s email program. Verify in the archives that “utf-8” is listed as the character set. The utf-8 character set uses base 64 encoding, and can be used for different reasons, most commonly here in the U.S. when an email is sent with multipart attachments that may include a word doc, binary file, or simply when it’s composed using HTML or Rich Text instead of plain text. It also is used by email programs when the language it is composed in uses characters not found in the normal English / ASCII char set. This often is the case when the poster is in a foreign country. Normally the email program that the person is using to read the email on the receiving end will decode the message and display it as text. However, the listserv software doesn’t do decoding for the archives, which is why it appears scrambled. The best way to ensure that messages don’t end up like this in the archive is to make sure people are
