We all have done it — received an email, hit reply all and continued a conversation oblivious that we are all essentially creating a kind of spam in everyone’s inbox, reducing people’s productivity and abusing their attention. Problem gets infinitely worse when folks put 50+ people on “CC.” It is 2014, and by now we should know better. Like someone said, Reply All is Evil.
Why can’t email clients — Apple Mail, Mailbox, Outlook, AirMail and Gmail — have a built in feature where when sending an email to more than a preset number of people (set by sender) those being copied are defaulted to “BCC” unless specified. It is a good way to reducing the mass-mail-reply-all clutter. Of course, someone can build a Chrome extension to add this functionality to Gmail. Together with Mute-button, it would go a long way towards a sane inbox.
PS: I tweeted about this yesterday and here are some good responses #1 #2 #3 #4 #5
Why are we always looking for someone else to make life easier for us. Anyone sending or replying to an email should put their brain into gear first and think about what they are doing
Because so far we have failed to comply, and shown that we don’t think before we act, it is time for us to rethink the software itself
Think you’re right – Have harped to friends about this for almost ever – even threatened to sell their cc: list to spammers – to no avail.
That seams a bit disingenuous! Why did I pay so much for an iPhone? To make my life easier! Why did I install Pocket in my iPhone, so that it makes reading easier!
Again, why did I pay so much for an iPhone? So that I can easily read this Blog post & reply to your comment while waiting in line at the Subway counter (which is right now)!
Wil
Not even clear what you are trying to say and how it links to our conversation. Please clarify!
Everything that could be done is based on a software design principles from a dawn of computing.
While in a mean time we had huge shift in main technology trends and inherited/introduced user behaviours.
In the past we had fixed computing stations and operators that are trained to use them. I know it sound ridiculous but people where educated to work with email, and believe it or not there are a lot of people today that don’t know around mail software. Mostly they hope that they done it right.
What we have presently is new market segment of daily productive repetitive tasks. Size of it should not be quantified but called closing to population level. Software is becoming our daily tool.
For that to be truly functional product it has to provide CARE-FREE usability.
Like when you use, pen and paper, phone, dollar bill, you don’t think about how to use it, you just do it.
These are just very broad strokes, and I am deliberately non-specific, but I managed to kindle some interest on your side, please contact me on dwanguard [at] yahoo com.
I hate to waste my time, but even more so from other people.
That’s a major problem to solve and we realized that. Building something related to this. Though the product is not ready, but you can join the beta list at http://pkutsto.re
Keep me posted
But Om, come to think of it, it keeps a lot of people reading and wondering and hence occupied even if not gainfully. 🙂