<<Yes...and one of those costs is educating people.  The original poster,
for example, about posting binaries.  You, for example, about the value
of clearly quoting included text.  (E.g., a single "<<" at start and single
">>" at end really isn't sufficient.)>>

Clearly a matter of personal opinion. I generally try to refrain from
imposing my personal preferences on others as some kind of "law" about which
they need to be "educated".

<<Note that the "in practice the occasional attachment seems to neither
cause difficulties" is clearly wrong...it caused problems.  That's why
someone complained!>>

Which goes to my point again: the difficulty arose due to the recipient not
being equipped to handle Usenet-newsfeed level traffic on an electronic mail
channel. Which, of course, they shouldn't be expected to handle; they are
two different systems with different characteristics.

Steve