DISQUS

Oracle AppsLab: Do You Zombie Reply to All?

  • Matt Rasmussen · 1 year ago
    I dislike it when people zombie reply to all but enjoy the rants that follow. I always wonder why some email admin person doesn't do something to stop the spam. (Not being an email admin I wonder if there is such an ability...)

    However, I'm not totally innocent in these cases. Three or four years ago after at least 50 "please unsubscribe" and flame replies to the initial gaffe that was sent to 500+ employees, I replied to all with the response "You are all now off my Christmas card list!" =) Some people I didn't even know replied to me asking me to reconsider.
  • Jake · 1 year ago
    Great story. I don't think there's a way to stop a thread from an admin level, and if there were, someone would have a boring job. As with spam, I think my tolerance level is just higher than most, which I don't get because ignoring costs very little effort compared to getting angry enough to fire off a reply.
  • megbear · 1 year ago
    My favorite one of these involved a very large attachment in which those who replied all somehow sent it again. So not only did I get to see the humor/flame-o-grams I also got to go over quota a few times. Yeah!
  • Jake · 1 year ago
    Oh yeah, that's a special variant I forgot to mention. Don't get me started on the tiny inbox size limit.
  • Dan Norris · 1 year ago
    I worked at a company that had limits on my inbox--not tiny limits, but I keep a lot of mail for CYA purposes. They asked me to purge messages. I asked them to purge customers and/or employees to help me reduce the amount of mail...or remove the limit. I didn't have any more problems after that (but don't work there any more).
  • Jake · 1 year ago
    Did they purge you? I think discovery laws covering email require backups to tape or some other permanent archive now. Destroying emails is a no-no.
  • Dan Norris · 1 year ago
    No purging, they simply raised my limit. My other comments related to
    the cost of someone spending time reviewing and enforcing limits versus
    the cost of storage...that storage was relatively cheap compared to
    human time. I'm quite sure that no one considered the implications
    (legal or otherwise) of removing emails.
  • Jake · 1 year ago
    I agree. Storage is cheap, and people shouldn't be encouraged to delete emails, even if that's not really what happens.
  • Wayne Boerger · 1 year ago
    I don't get why people get all worked up about it either. After about 10 (I was on the list too), I did a quick filter add in Thunderbird and haven't seen any since. I realize that not everyone knows how or is willing to do that, but it seems pretty simple to me.

    BTW, I have been on at least 3-4 of those type of email strings this year. The prior one's went on MUCH longer than this one.
  • Jake · 1 year ago
    But was it as funny? Your filtering skills kept you out of the humor loop. You should duck back in to see the last few. Great stuff.

    Point is valid, I guess some people a) ignored, b) filtered, c) got pissed and replied rather than doing a or b, d) made a joke, e) all of the above :)
  • Tim · 1 year ago
    Hey Jake
    I was on that thread and was waiting for the flames(fun) to continue ... dang.

    I cant believe how worked up folks get and then want to tell everyone how worked up they are about how everyone is replying all and getting them all worked up ... an amusing diversion.
    Tim
  • Jake · 1 year ago
    I know. I'm actually disappointed it came to an end. The IQ tangent was getting good. Ah irony, it wouldn't be so fun if everyone got it.
  • LukeG · 1 year ago
    Sounds like gmail would've made your life much easier...the beauty of threading.
  • Jake · 1 year ago
    In this case, yes, but in others, GMail is a bit jarring, e.g. it threads all my LinkedIn bacn, which I don't find all that useful. It's sometimes confusing when you just so happen to have the same subject for two different, unrelated emails.

    These are corner cases though. I've been using GMail since 2004, happily.