Five email tics I’d love for you to lose

[matthew]

I agree with evey one of these! I would love to make them my new email sig, but I know I would offend more people than I would actually help...

(From http://www.43folders.com/2005/11/07/five-email-tics-id-love-for-you-to-lose/ )
The liberal use of the “VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!” flag
The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the “Unsubscribe” I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you’ve ever sent
The including of my — plus 98 other strangers’ — personal email addresses in the “To:” line of your friendly reminder about Tyler’s birthday party

[TravisNewman]

2. For business email, that's necessary.

3. No crap.

4. uuuuggghhhhhhhhh I hate it. Incredimail is the worst thing to ever happen to the internet.

5. uuuuggghhhhhhhhh I hate it ;)

[23meg]

I hate it when people end just about every mail they send you with "PR" (short for "please respond"; meant to be used sparingly for must-get-back mails) and don't care the slightest bit when you think it's something urgent/important and respond. I call these the PR people; most of them actually are anyway.

[matthew]

I thought of a few more to add.

-I wish you would quit forwarding me every virus rumor, urban legend and internet hoax email you receive. Bill Gates is NOT going to send you money for forwarding email to everyone in your address book, there is no underground market interested in buying my kidneys if I fall asleep in a hotel, and sometimes email titled "I love you" really does mean that (besides, I use Linux...).

-Please tell me ahead of time before you flood my inbox with pictures of your last fishing/hunting trip/vacation. I may want to see the best 2 or 3 pictures, but I don't need 15 shots of you standing next to dead fish/deer/sleeping girls in a Disneyland castle.

-Stop asking me to sign every inane petition you can think of. I am not going to add my name to the list and forward it to eveyone I know. In fact, I was number 500 on the last petition and chose not to send it to Steve Ballmer so he never heard about all the people upset that Windows didn't choose the name you submitted for their next edition.

I'll probably think of more as time goes on. Feel free to add your rants as well...the funnier, the better. Think of it as really inexpensive therapy.

[Stormy Eyes]

2. For business email, that's necessary.

For business email, you should damned well be using encryption. Who in their right mind sends business correspondence on postcards?

[TravisNewman]

Putting every title you've ever had, and some that don't even matter, after your name

John Doe
Home: 111-111-1111
Work: 111-111-1112
email@one.com
email@two.com
Senior vice president of something
Coordinator of something else
something else that doesn't matter
something else that matters even less

"some stupid quote that nobody wants to read"
--Someone

[TravisNewman]

Edit: nevermind

[Stormy Eyes]

Frigging chain letters. I hate 'em, my wife hates 'em, and I keep a 2MB core dump file to use as an attachment for all replies to idiots who insist on sending me chain mail after being warned that I really do not want to hear about how little Timmy in Bedsore, Nebraska has terminal cancer and would like to get a card from as many cities as possible before the end.

[matthew]

Edit: nevermindrotfl. I read it before you edited. :D:D:D

[matthew]

Frigging chain letters. I hate 'em, my wife hates 'em, and I keep a 2MB core dump file to use as an attachment for all replies to idiots who insist on sending me chain mail after being warned that I really do not want to hear about how little Timmy in Bedsore, Nebraska has terminal cancer and would like to get a card from as many cities as possible before the end.I'm getting some bad ideas...and I like 'em.

[Stormy Eyes]

I'm getting some bad ideas...and I like 'em.

If you want some really bad ideas, then I recommend reading about Vlad Tepes. Pay particular attention to how he came to be known as The Impaler: that's what I do to spammers when I can get a hold of them.

[TravisNewman]

rotfl. I read it before you edited. :D:D:D
yeah, I changed that to protect the innocent. Any my own ass, as the case may be ;)

[kvidell]

My sister's signature is pretty bad...
Dawn R.
Administrative Assistant
National Accounts
Pepsi Bottling Group
XXX-XXX-XXXX - Direct Line
XXX-XXX-XXXX - FaxIt's at the end of every e-mail I get from her.

She also does that neat To: line trick.

Ah well. She's my sis :) <3
- Kev

[TravisNewman]

that's not so bad ;)

What's the neat little To: line trick?

[kvidell]

that's not so bad ;)

What's the neat little To: line trick?
9,000 addresses, all suddenly public knowledge.

[kvidell]

and, as for my sister's signature... it was worse.
It used to be in neat colours and have an extra carriage return between each line.

[Stormy Eyes]

Ah well. She's my sis :) <3
- Kev

So what if she's your sister. You should have been a fly on the wall when I chewed out my father for sending a dozen 4MB bitmapped images (*.BMP) via email and crashing the mail server.

[TravisNewman]

oh my. That's terrible...

[kvidell]

Oh, and yay for Digg.com :-P
- K

[wilford]

Frigging chain letters. I hate 'em, my wife hates 'em, and I keep a 2MB core dump file to use as an attachment for all replies to idiots who insist on sending me chain mail after being warned that I really do not want to hear about how little Timmy in Bedsore, Nebraska has terminal cancer and would like to get a card from as many cities as possible before the end.


AMEN to you! Woah. I already waste too much time reading important messages, that to read non-sense emails, that's ordering me to forward to another hundred of people or else my pintoe is gona explode, is too much. well in short, i just hate them (period) :D

[nocturn]

1) I agree
2) Yes, and basicly it is useless, because it is not legally valid. The fact that you received the mail entitles you to use the content.
That little piece on the bottom does not change it because you haven't agreed to it (so it is not a contract or NDA).
3) Indeed, this led me to implement blacklisting in my personal mailserver.
4) I'm not a fanatic about this, but I do hate people who type a text-only message in Word and then attach it to an empty E-mail.
5) True, but undeliberate.

[matthew]

A few more:

-Check your email more often than once a month.

-Acknowledge important email. This doesn't matter for a lot of things, but if it involves work or other important communication it only takes a few seconds to hit "reply" and say "I received this." Read-receipt requests don't always work because most people turn them off after just a day or two because of the next issue. I know you read email and know how to send it because you have forwarded 15 lists of stale jokes in the last 10 days.

-Don't request a read-receipt for EVERY SINGLE email you write. Is it so vital that you know I read the email about your aunt's appointment at the hair salon??

and finally...

-Turn off the auto-reply to every email. In the 1990's the .vacation file was a good thing and can still be today, but some of you leave these auto-reply notices on all the time and it is utterly meaningless. "I have received your email and someday I might read it and get back to you if I feel like it but your email may have fallen into a black hole somewhere as well for all you know because I never actually reply other than this stupid auto-responder message you are now reading for the 256th time."

[Wolki]

- Quoting too much

Generally, people keep copies of their mail for a while. No need to send the *whole* discussion every time. If something from past mails is relevant, only include that, so I won't have to guess what you refer to.

- Quoting in a strange order

Generally, I receive mail from people with a european/western background, in a language that is read from left to right and top to bottom. If you're quoting something relevant, why do I have to start reading at the bottom of the mail?

[Stormy Eyes]

Generally, I receive mail from people with a european/western background, in a language that is read from left to right and top to bottom. If you're quoting something relevant, why do I have to start reading at the bottom of the mail?

Microsoft Outlook is the worst offender in this regard. It insists on quoting the original message after the reply. When people who use Outlook and have never gotten mail from somebody who uses a real mail client gets mail from me, they ask me why I'm doing it wrong. I just tell them, "Listen. If I wanted to play Jeopardy!, I'd audition."

[basketcase]

I used to have a general reply to chain letters.....

'Thank you for allowing me to be one of your many friends so that you can get that free -insert bs prize here-'

I can not stand the e-mails from my friends who are asking me to sign up for something so they can get a free ipod or free cd/shirt/et. al.

We've instated a policy here at work, no fancy backgrounds in the e-mails (stationary in Outlook), no clipart, get rid of those damn smileys at the bottom of the e-mail, that was once hot bar, but is now 'spyware cleaner' or something of the sorts!!

pretty sad when I have moved a few past friends to spam, because that is all I get...fwd: -> TRASH

[gray-squirrel]

1. At work, the switch from Eudora to Outlook put a stop to those pesky priority flags. Since then I've been able to spend time on more important things, :lol:

2. Attorneys of all people should know better. There is such a thing as regular mail and FedEx.

3. Haven't had that problem, no comment.

4. You really should take a look at Outlook Express. It has themes, also, but just because you use them doesn't mean that your messages get to everyone formatted the same way as you designed it. At least with Incredimail, the message looks exactly the same, even when reading messages in {gasp!} MSN Hotmail.

5. Well, at least there are people I know send messages to who don't necessarily know each other that well (they're not total strangers). And sometimes I will put the names in the To: line because what happens too often is that when I bcc: people, they have the habit of forwarding to friends, including many who I originally sent the message to in the beginning. So now some have multiple copies of the same message. If there is something of a sensitive nature I will either bcc: to a group of people I know who won't forward the message, then a regular one to the others (so that they know we're all on the same page and don't forward anything). I rarely e-mail to a large group of people anyway, so no one complains.

[Wolki]

Microsoft Outlook is the worst offender in this regard. It insists on quoting the original message after the reply. When people who use Outlook and have never gotten mail from somebody who uses a real mail client gets mail from me, they ask me why I'm doing it wrong. I just tell them, "Listen. If I wanted to play Jeopardy!, I'd audition."

Haha... :)
I can remember, earlier people learned quickly how to quote... the few ones that didn't were so ridiculed, eventually, that they got it too. And things were nice to read and understand... things changed since then, outlook got big, and now people don't even realize they write mails that are hard to read because everyone's doing it. Kind of sad.

[gray-squirrel]

Microsoft Outlook is the worst offender in this regard. It insists on quoting the original message after the reply. When people who use Outlook and have never gotten mail from somebody who uses a real mail client gets mail from me, they ask me why I'm doing it wrong. I just tell them, "Listen. If I wanted to play Jeopardy!, I'd audition."


It's not just Outlook or OE. Thunderbird does the same thing. But both can be set up to send messages in plain text and puts a ">" at the beginning of each line containing quoted text.

Must be the result of using GUI mail clients too much. . . I don't know.