'Reply all' considered harmful

[hirez]

Not long ago, I (metaphorically) toddled off to the Bristol City Socialist(ish) Glorious Five Year Plan webswerver in order to register my interest in the Corporation[1]-sponsored bicycle outing.

Just after lunch I was in receipt of an email from a well-meaning Corporation chap. I should think you can guess how it was addressed and how little trouble the 'bcc' field was put to.

I was surprised it took as long as half an hour before the first 'reply all' turned up.

[Edit: Followed by two more identical announcements with mongo To:-lists and a final bcc-ed one apologising for the previous set. Since I am not any kind of dreadful hacker or stalker, I have deleted the messages, since using the email addresses they contained for information-gathering from interesting corporates would be Wrong.]






[1] I believe the rot set in to modern society when a chap could no longer refer to 'corporation buses' or 'corporation dustcarts' (and probably the Ministry of Works).

Comments

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

I really don't like "reply all" since I fear confrontation in all forms, but I keep finding that I will email a specific person in response to their initial to-all post, only to have them forward my reply on to the whole list with spuriously innocent "does the wider group have comment on this?" comment at the top.

Communication would be so much less fraught if we all stuck to pigeons.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Thankfully I don't usually have to cope with such passive-aggressive malarkey. Although I do tend to point and laugh when site-wide email cascades go horribly wrong and people start replying-all with 'Take me off this list!' and 'Please stop replying!!!1!'

R-A should be a ctrl-alt-meta-cokebottle key combination. Even that wouldn't stop them, though...

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

People do still talk about the gas/electricity board, though. And we still refer to the council dump/tip rather than the "[outsourced company] household waste recycling centre" as mine now is.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Using velcro?

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

Hubba Bubba.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

There should be a clever X-No-Reply-To-All header. Although the only people likely to use it and have clients that implement it would be the sort of people that don't do that sort of naughty address-spewing in the first place. In short: it's perfect for an RFC.

Soon-to-happen conference. Organisers neglect to configure their listservs properly. 20 minutes after their first mailshot, everyone gets spammed to death with strangers' Out-of-office autoreplies and the replies to those replies etc. ad infinitum. Tears before bedtime and sarcasm from the clueful.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Extra mirth: Someone sends intemperate 'Please stop replying-all' message. Then tries to use the M$Exchange 'recall' feature. Recall message traverses SMTP gateway and generates new storm of OoO autoreplies from outlier Exchange rigs.

[quercus.livejournal.com]

You have to _register_ for that? I've always just pootled up. No way I'm going to encourage the Public Branch of Crest Nicholson to know anything about me.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

They already know who I am from the Council Tax and sending a man round with some garden refuse sacks, so I'm not too bothered about that bit.

You can register if you want. Or not. Or register from a disposable Hushmail account and pitch up on the day in Groucho-style false nose and spectacles.

[gaius-octavian.livejournal.com]

If I worked for Microsoft the reply all button would be like three times bigger, at least, for comic affect.

If I worked in desktop support, however, I would simply use a group policy to disable the reply all button across the entire domain.

[specialunclet.livejournal.com]

i miss the corperation as well

sold the french house but i did find you a nice four storey windmill near the stones in Carnac

go on buy it and i will come over for the first three days of the tour next year