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When I’m Mistakenly on an Email Chain, Should I Reply All Asking to Be Removed?

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Re: When I’m Mistakenly on an Email Chain, Should I Reply All Asking to Be Removed?

#31

Post by jandrese »

nofinator wrote: post #3

This is purely anecdotal, but I am seeing far fewer replyallpocalypses than I did 10-15 years ago. Has something changed, like better server or client email software? Or perhaps admins and users are more savvy about avoiding this kind of behavior? (Maybe I've just been lucky to not have to deal with one of these for several years.)

Maybe some MTAs now warn if a message is going to be sent to a large number of people? A simple "This message is going to be sent to 15,000 people, are you sure you want to send it?" message would work wonders I bet.

Re: When I’m Mistakenly on an Email Chain, Should I Reply All Asking to Be Removed?

#33

Post by xeromal »

jandrese wrote: post #31
nofinator wrote: post #3

This is purely anecdotal, but I am seeing far fewer replyallpocalypses than I did 10-15 years ago. Has something changed, like better server or client email software? Or perhaps admins and users are more savvy about avoiding this kind of behavior? (Maybe I've just been lucky to not have to deal with one of these for several years.)

Maybe some MTAs now warn if a message is going to be sent to a large number of people? A simple "This message is going to be sent to 15,000 people, are you sure you want to send it?" message would work wonders I bet.

My outlook client will do that. I assume that scares enough people away.

Re: When I’m Mistakenly on an Email Chain, Should I Reply All Asking to Be Removed?

#34

Post by losteric »

kchoudhu wrote: post #24
williamscales wrote: post #7

Relevant Wikipedia page, since the article is completely lacking in historical context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm "On 14 October 1997, a Microsoft employee noticed that they were on an as-yet unknown email distribution list 'Bedlam DL3', and emailed the list asking to be removed. This list contained approximately a quarter of the company's employees, 13,000 email addresses. Other users replied to the…

This happened a few times at the bank I worked at for almost a decade. You could count on the technologists to not throw gas on the fire by replying (everyone'd heard of Bedlam DL3), but once non-technical sales, trading and ops were on the list, all bets were off.

Well, aside from the trolling devs. At my company there've been a couple incidents of this where someone jumps on the thread with advice like "Unsubscribe has to be in the title" or "You have to BCC the list!". When that happens... oh dear god.

Re: When I’m Mistakenly on an Email Chain, Should I Reply All Asking to Be Removed?

#35

Post by stcredzero »

joesmo wrote: post #26
stcredzero wrote: post #23

Couldn't an "unsubscribe" functionality be written into an email server? You'd have to change the way mailboxes are stored. In particular, email threads and recipients lists would have to become explicit objects in a distributed database. Perhaps threads could be identified by a canonicalized version of the original recipients list, plus some other information?

Or you could just reply to the list itself with the word 'remove' in the subject (doesn't work for all list servers). That's how most servers handled subscriptions back in the days and probably still is now.

That would work for a LISTSERV -- but this is a special kind of server that does keep the list as an explicit object. If it's a recipients list in a regular email, that would be different.

Re: When I’m Mistakenly on an Email Chain, Should I Reply All Asking to Be Removed?

#37

Post by nkrisc »

At a former job someone sent a completely inane email asking about something personal to an HR email list or all people in the company, about 21,000 people.

Why does such an email list even exist? For some kind of HR emergency? Aren't there other emergency messaging systems that could be more effective?

Re: When I’m Mistakenly on an Email Chain, Should I Reply All Asking to Be Removed?

#38

Post by pavel_lishin »

nkrisc wrote: post #37

At a former job someone sent a completely inane email asking about something personal to an HR email list or all people in the company, about 21,000 people. Why does such an email list even exist? For some kind of HR emergency? Aren't there other emergency messaging systems that could be more effective?

At my company, certain lists can only be used by certain people to prevent exactly this sort of thing.

Re: When I’m Mistakenly on an Email Chain, Should I Reply All Asking to Be Removed?

#39

Post by ghaff »

nofinator wrote: post #3

This is purely anecdotal, but I am seeing far fewer replyallpocalypses than I did 10-15 years ago. Has something changed, like better server or client email software? Or perhaps admins and users are more savvy about avoiding this kind of behavior? (Maybe I've just been lucky to not have to deal with one of these for several years.)

I think it's mostly that users are more sophisticated although there are also tools to mute threads (and to fold messages into threads in the first place), etc. which may help on the margins. Admins are also probably a bit smarter in setting mailing list defaults and, in at least some cases, setting up filters for certain lists.

Re: When I’m Mistakenly on an Email Chain, Should I Reply All Asking to Be Removed?

#40

Post by [deleted] »

kchoudhu wrote: post #24
williamscales wrote: post #7

Relevant Wikipedia page, since the article is completely lacking in historical context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm "On 14 October 1997, a Microsoft employee noticed that they were on an as-yet unknown email distribution list 'Bedlam DL3', and emailed the list asking to be removed. This list contained approximately a quarter of the company's employees, 13,000 email addresses. Other users replied to the…

This happened a few times at the bank I worked at for almost a decade. You could count on the technologists to not throw gas on the fire by replying (everyone'd heard of Bedlam DL3), but once non-technical sales, trading and ops were on the list, all bets were off.

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