Re: your mail

I used to be kind of embarrassed about the amount of email, much of it unread, in my email inbox. Then I read this article in the online Wall Street Journal, having been directed to it from this blog entry. Knowing that I'm not alone makes things a little better (I rejoiced when the school said it would delete all email older than 3 months from their servers this past summer. Unfortunately, they haven't made good on their promise).

Part of the email problem, it seems, has to do with too many people emailing out "free brownies in the kitchen" emails. But a lot of it has to do with indiscriminate use of "Reply to All". Last year someone forwarded a message to a previously little-known listserve here at the school, and everyone responding to it felt obliged to Respond to All, generating 20 or 30 emails regarding whatever the original message was about. People who found themselves on this email list now had 20 or 30 extra, unwanted email messages, and wanted off of the listserve - "Please take me off this list" they wrote, and hit "Reply to All". This, of course, generated more email in everyone's inboxes, prompting more "Get me off this list" email, and eventually the "get me off this list" emails outnumbered the original messages by at least three to one. By the end of the day IT had shut down the listserve for the weekend. When they restarted it Monday morning, several more "get me off this list" emails appeared before the whole thing finally died out.

Now, the school does provide a spam blocker with their email service, but that only catches email that is either flagrantly spam or comes from the company that holds my student loans. All of the friendly fire slips through. My solution is to sort directly from the inbox to the trash: "reminder - talk on psychoceramics of middle europe", trash; "sublet available", trash; "For sale", trash; "[No Subject]", trash. "For Sale" deserves special note. It looks helpful, on its surface - "ah, this person is selling something. Is there anything that I want?" Trouble is, there are things that I want - a new printer, a '73 Pacer in lime green; but I have no idea if this person is selling them. "Car for sale," or better yet, "1973 lime green Pacer for sale" would be more helpful.