Comments on: Data Underload #8 – Unsolicited

By: Fenny Fox

Fenny Fox — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:28:26 +0000

Remove remove remove remove…. remove… ULTRA! ULTRA! ULTRA! 72 hit combo!

That is all.

By: Please Do No Reply All « A Questioning Attitude

Please Do No Reply All « A Questioning Attitude — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 03:17:06 +0000

[...] 18, 2010 · Leave a Comment “So much for the collective intelligence of the Transportation [...]

By: What I’m reading ed. 100315 « The Hermitage 3.0 (Beta)

What I’m reading ed. 100315 « The Hermitage 3.0 (Beta) — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:27:22 +0000

[...] Reply-all: The bane of inboxes everywhere. (Humor) [...]

By: Darin

Darin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:34:09 +0000

What a flashback to the ’80′s.
Back then it was as simple as hitting ‘R’ instead of ‘r’. It looks the same today, but what’s the excuse now?

By: A Petty Blog » Do not “Reply All”

A Petty Blog » Do not “Reply All” — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:31:24 +0000

[...] Flowing Data visualized an incident thus: [...]

By: briang

briang — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:01:32 +0000

This is funny, and apparently people no longer understand what a listserv alias does. They just think in terms of “reply all” or not “reply all.”

When email was used exclusively by people who understood what listserv software was for it was useful, but with everyone using email, listserv should be discontinued.

By: zeeg

zeeg — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:08:24 +0000

I was working for ICT Group (http://www.ictgroup.com) a few years back when something similar happened on a much larger scale; mass-mail to the internal address database followed with a bunch of reply-alls. ICT has clients all over the world, some 10,000 email addresses were tied up in this distribution, and most of the idiot end users were doing the same – reply all. Lovely.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:26:31 +0000

(1) If this is a business, users may all be forced to the same e-mail system. For example, my company forces users to use Outlook Web Access. In OWA, each e-mail is a new item; it doesn’t do the nice things like Gmail. And if you have job where stay logged in to your OWA all day (which you have to do if you want to use the company calendar), each time you get an e-mail the computer beeps at you and flashes, which gets irritating when they are coming in about 1 per 2 minutes. (2) Not to be a jerk, but many of our older employees are not great with e-mail. So the very fact that they see other people saying “Remove me from the list” makes them think they too have to send a “Remove me from the list.” They wouldn’t have removed themselves, but they saw so many other people doing it.

By: Jose Marquez

Jose Marquez — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:07:03 +0000

The habits at work here are known and could be remedied with UI improvements. For example:

Not all users read email from “most recent” back to “first received.” It’s very likely that many of the initial “unsubscribe me” were sent by users who lacked awareness of later identical messages from other users.

Similarly, many if not most users will read only a few emails in a single thread before estimating the contents of the remainder, which will remain unread. Most likely those making requests that users not reply all (an impossibility in this case) assumed most of their unread emails from this thread were of the unsubscribe me variety.

Finally, users can’t be blamed for a script or process that looks like a duck but roars like a lion. Namely: a process that turns a simple reply into a reply all is an aberration — like a sheet of ice on a darkened road — and few would know just how to react to it until it’s removed.

May a half dozen Google Waves flourish, it’s time.

By: links for 2010-02-19 « riverrun meaghn beta

links for 2010-02-19 « riverrun meaghn beta — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 03:06:42 +0000

[...] Data Underload #8 â€“ Unsolicited | FlowingData FlowingData is the visualization and statistics blog of Nathan Yau. I highlight how designers, programmers, and statisticians are putting data to good use. Sometimes I write viz tutorials. "A few months back, the Caltrans Performance Measurement System (PeMS) opened up a brand spanking new forum where people could discuss how they used the group's traffic data. They created an email list to tell everyone about the new forum. The problem is that PeMS used a single address to email everyone. So when someone "replied all," he would in turn email every single person on the list. [...]