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Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

neilzone.co.uk

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Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#271

Post by not_kurt_godel »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #116
p51-remorse wrote: post #11

I kind of get why we don’t like this in email, but for SMS and Slack I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reactions. They’re a way to say “I received this and have a positive reaction to it, with no further communication necessary”. Replaces a lot of useless typing I had to do to sound polite when saying “fine, no further comment”. And then getting a notification from the other party acknowledging my acknowledgment… yuck.

My friend interned at the FAA 20 years ago. He said the norm there was to write "Concur without comment." I thought that was brilliant. Of course, when I use it in conversation, no one gets my reference and thinks I am weird. But that is going to happen anyway.

Concur without comment.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#272

Post by greggsy »

setopt wrote: post #190
joelthelion wrote: post #168

In an outlook only company, reactions make a ton of sense. They save tons of "great, thank you " emails. Of course you can still send real thank you emails when you're genuinely thankful!

I’m not an Outlook user, and I really dislike the product. But I wish the feature that you can write say @joel to get someone’s attention in large email threads with too many on CC would have been adopted by more mail clients.

Something like an iMessage of mail.

Surely there’s an RFC for that right?

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#273

Post by JohnFen »

viraptor wrote: post #75
JohnFen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by turning them off, you are therefore forcing people who want to communicate with you to adapt to your communication preferences because you have I don't see how. All it means is that I won't see the reactions. That's my loss. I'm not forcing anyone else to do anything differently. If it actually begins to interfere with communications too much, I can turn them back on. > it's somehow unethical or abusive of the u…

> All it means is that I won't see the reactions. That's my loss. I'm not forcing anyone else to do anything differently. "Are we ok doing ...?" (People reacting with :+1:) Now you have to figure out if you're being ignored or people don't have an answer. You ask them again directly, which they may also simply react to. By bothering them again, you are asking them to do things differently for you.

Well, nobody I know would respond to such a question with a reaction (an emoji, yes, a reaction, no), so this is not an issue in my crowd. I suppose (and it's obvious now that I think about it) this depends on what the social norms are in your group.

> By bothering them again, you are asking them to do things differently for you.

To a trivial degree, sure. Why is it OK for others to ask me to do things differently in this regard and not for me to ask them to do things differently anyway?

Social interaction always involves compromise and reasonable accommodations for others. In this sense, I ask people to do things differently for me every day, and they usually do. And others ask me to do things differently every day, and I usually do. It's part of the social negotiations that make societies work.

I do feel the need to reiterate that I am not opposed to reactions generally. Only in email.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#274

Post by graemep »

rob74 wrote: post #200
setopt wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not an Outlook user, and I really dislike the product. But I wish the feature that you can write say @joel to get someone’s attention in large email threads with too many on CC would have been adopted by more mail clients.

I'm a Linux user myself, but I've since given up on using a standalone email client, and just use the Outlook web interface...

Why? Because of these reactions?

I have never seen one myself.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#275

Post by JohnFen »

megous wrote: post #68
JohnFen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's email server dependent. When my mailserver blocks emails, it just drops them onto the floor. The sender doesn't get any sort of notification.

That's not blocking, then. You're just accepting the email and not doing anything with it. It's usually called "blackholing". It's less nice to the senders for obvious reasons.

It's been called blocking for decades, but sure, we can call it whatever you like. From my point of view, it's blocking because it blocks the emails from reaching me.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#276

Post by JohnFen »

isatty wrote: post #120
JohnFen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're texting with an iOS user and they use a reaction, Apple "helpfully" forwards the reaction as text. Which is OK. What I don't like is that it also quotes the complete text that the person reacted to.

You can like a message a page up, for example, and you’ll get a random “user liked your message” and be completely lost.

True. There's no solution to this that appeals to everyone. Personally, it wouldn't bother me at all to not know which message got "liked" (because "liking" something doesn't really say anything that important), but I can see how it could be important to others.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#278

Post by hunter2_ »

krisoft wrote: post #238
hunter2_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A delivery receipt, an automatic read receipt, and a human ack are quite distinct. The first means the device will offer it to a user who eventually looks. The second means the device expects that the user saw it. The third means the user definitely saw and understood it. It's rarely obligatory (unless the sender literally requests an ack) but is more to offer a data point just in case it happens to be useful. In som…

> For example, if I tell my kids they can stay out later than 10pm any night if I know about it, then even if they message me saying they'll be out late tonight, actually staying out late is blocked by my ack. Do you have an integration test for that in CI? That protocol sounds like the kind of thing which can break easily. If I as a kid would hear that instruction "can stay out later than 10pm any night if parent kn…

I was just trying to come up with a scenario involving an obligatory ack (but not one in response to someone literally requesting a response every time), as a way of showing that while an ack is not typically obligatory, theoretically there could be a counter examples in the form of the ack-seeker twiddling their thumbs until ack, so to speak. I think you're right that these hypothetical kids would find it infuriating, and such protocol would work better if every ack-seeking message actually had a question ("11pm, ok?") making it explicit. It's just weird to pose a question if the answer is the same 100% of the time, and the only variable is timely receipt. How about this: "11pm, lmk" -- but the suffix is wasted keystrokes whatever it is.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#279

Post by [deleted] »

kazinator wrote: post #117

Or, you know, you could just turf all e-mails with those "reacted to your message" Subject: headers, and not use any MS specific headers in what you send. This reaction thing seems like a gift from Microsoft to spammers. E-mail recipients have a "like" button that instantly generates a reply, validating that the e-mail address is staffed.

[deleted]

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#280

Post by reaperducer »

p51-remorse wrote: post #11

I kind of get why we don’t like this in email, but for SMS and Slack I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reactions. They’re a way to say “I received this and have a positive reaction to it, with no further communication necessary”. Replaces a lot of useless typing I had to do to sound polite when saying “fine, no further comment”. And then getting a notification from the other party acknowledging my acknowledgment… yuck.

Replaces a lot of useless typing I had to do to sound polite when saying “fine, no further comment”.

We've had macros on computers since at least the 1980's. Just pick your standard acknowledgement and bind it to a hotkey, or a text expansion.

On macOS: Settings → Keyboard → Text Replacements…

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