Why you should ALWAYS CC someone • Hacker News Board

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#21

Post by adityar » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:29 AM UTC

dsirijus wrote: post #16

adityar wrote: post #14

Is the content being mailed the same? are you mailing the same people again before and after alex was created? are you split-testing -- 1/2 recipients get the email without alex in CC? You might need some more experiments to attribute it to pure CC.

Content is the same, but that's obviously subjective. The conversations were either all with alex or without, meaning, no reply requests were sent to the pre-alex mail with alex in cc and I haven't split tested.

how about the recipients? If they had an email from you before (part of the 5K set), then might be more open to replying to the second one (in the 2k set) even if Alex was not on cc out of guilt?

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#22

Post by adityar » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:31 AM UTC

philbarr wrote: post #7

Perhaps, over the last two months you've been running the experiment, you've been thinking about actually wanting a response and have automatically been constructing better emails that people feel they can reply to. Unlike the "brain-dump" ones I sometimes get that just don't deserve a response. To be perfectly honest, if there's more than one person on the email, I'm more likely to hope it's not my problem...

isn't there a name for that? something like diffusion of responsibility. the same reason we don't help one person in trouble when there's more than one potential helper...

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#23

Post by philbarr » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:36 AM UTC

adityar wrote: post #22

philbarr wrote: post #7

Perhaps, over the last two months you've been running the experiment, you've been thinking about actually wanting a response and have automatically been constructing better emails that people feel they can reply to. Unlike the "brain-dump" ones I sometimes get that just don't deserve a response. To be perfectly honest, if there's more than one person on the email, I'm more likely to hope it's not my problem...

isn't there a name for that? something like diffusion of responsibility. the same reason we don't help one person in trouble when there's more than one potential helper...

You mean like this: http://www2.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/scraig/gansberg.html

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#24

Post by eric-hu » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:37 AM UTC

philbarr wrote: post #7

Perhaps, over the last two months you've been running the experiment, you've been thinking about actually wanting a response and have automatically been constructing better emails that people feel they can reply to. Unlike the "brain-dump" ones I sometimes get that just don't deserve a response. To be perfectly honest, if there's more than one person on the email, I'm more likely to hope it's not my problem...

So to design a better controlled experiment, the OP should write a statistically significant number of emails (>100...maybe 1000+) without sending them. An app should perform a double-blind study by randomly choosing half those emails to go to multiple recipients (all but one being fake) and choosing the other half to go to one recipient only.

Anyone see any holes in this approach?

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#25

Post by dsirijus » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:38 AM UTC

adityar wrote: post #21

dsirijus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content is the same, but that's obviously subjective. The conversations were either all with alex or without, meaning, no reply requests were sent to the pre-alex mail with alex in cc and I haven't split tested.

how about the recipients? If they had an email from you before (part of the 5K set), then might be more open to replying to the second one (in the 2k set) even if Alex was not on cc out of guilt?

Most of the recipients are contacted on relatively regular basis (some daily, some weekly, some monthly).

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#26

Post by dsirijus » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:43 AM UTC

adityar wrote: post #22

philbarr wrote: post #7

Perhaps, over the last two months you've been running the experiment, you've been thinking about actually wanting a response and have automatically been constructing better emails that people feel they can reply to. Unlike the "brain-dump" ones I sometimes get that just don't deserve a response. To be perfectly honest, if there's more than one person on the email, I'm more likely to hope it's not my problem...

isn't there a name for that? something like diffusion of responsibility. the same reason we don't help one person in trouble when there's more than one potential helper...

But this technically isn't diffusion. It's concentration of responsibility.

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#27

Post by smanek » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:45 AM UTC

adityar wrote: post #22

philbarr wrote: post #7

Perhaps, over the last two months you've been running the experiment, you've been thinking about actually wanting a response and have automatically been constructing better emails that people feel they can reply to. Unlike the "brain-dump" ones I sometimes get that just don't deserve a response. To be perfectly honest, if there's more than one person on the email, I'm more likely to hope it's not my problem...

isn't there a name for that? something like diffusion of responsibility. the same reason we don't help one person in trouble when there's more than one potential helper...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#28

Post by ackien » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:45 AM UTC

adityar wrote: post #22

philbarr wrote: post #7

Perhaps, over the last two months you've been running the experiment, you've been thinking about actually wanting a response and have automatically been constructing better emails that people feel they can reply to. Unlike the "brain-dump" ones I sometimes get that just don't deserve a response. To be perfectly honest, if there's more than one person on the email, I'm more likely to hope it's not my problem...

isn't there a name for that? something like diffusion of responsibility. the same reason we don't help one person in trouble when there's more than one potential helper...

The bystander effect/Genovese syndrome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Perhaps the effect is quite different when there is just one other bystander, as opposed to a whole crowd of them.

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#29

Post by Praveens » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:48 AM UTC

If we are to neglect the importance of the email and solely judge on one's replying instinct when there is a email id in the cc field, then i feel i am obligated to reply as there is a certain amount of importance attached to the content of the email and its reply would be monitored by not just the sender but also the person in cc.

Re: Why you should ALWAYS CC someone

#30

Post by dsirijus » Wed, May 09, 2012, 9:55 AM UTC

israelyc wrote: post #15

Really interesting, have you tested the effect on gmail priority inbox? it could explain a higher open rate.. and it would awesome to know that cc is part of their rankings.. [EDIT]- Also, if you all set with labels already, would you mind continuing the test with something like SigBuzz (g apps) to track open rates and keep us posted?

Well, it's gone public now, it's tainted. I'm already receiving "You sleazy bastard. :)" mails.