I'm sure you've heard stories like this before, but when I was in college, I witnessed the worst case of mass e-mail idiocy I've ever seen. At the beginning of the school year, the head of the College of Liberal Arts sent out an e-mail announcement to everyone in CLA (which totaled about 700 people). One person replied to everyone saying, "take me off this list." Within an hour, we had every single newbie freshman replying to everyone to say, "take me off the list too," and others replying to tell everyone to quit replying. Before it was over, the e-mail server crashed under the strain and we all had to clean over 90 of these stupid messages from our inboxes. According to most of my friends in the computer science department, that's what happens when you let liberal arts majors use computers.

Alana Olson
A University of Minnesota, Duluth graduate with a degree in history. Now working as a network administrator.

Guys,

I appreciate very much that you have written such an article. However, most of my friends do read Chinese more easily than English. So I would like to know if there's any Chinese translation of your article out there in the Internet. If not, would you mind if someone (probably me) translate and post it somewhere (any suggestion?)? Although I really don't know how long it will take, I think it's a meaningful thing to do.

Right now I am suffering most from the "Reply All", and "Virus Warning" thing. I've begun to let others know about the email etiquette.

I would like to thank you again for teaching me new things.

Faithfully,
Byron Cheung, Hong Kong

Byron:

If you want to translate it, it's perfectly OK with us. (Too bad babelfish doesn't do Asian languages.) If you publish the translation elsewhere, we'd sincerely like a link back to our version -- and let us know when and where to look. Or you could send us a file and we'd link it from our page. Whichever you think is best...

I work and teach in a university computer lab. I think you can imagine the kinds of problems I encounter while teaching students about computers, Internet and email. I really enjoyed your site. May I refer students to it and use your examples in my teaching?
-Cathy

PS - There's one thing you didn't mention about multi-forwards and exposed addresses that you might find interesting to know. My sister has a little porno web site. She doesn't sell porno though, her site is just bait. She sells the email addresses of everyone who hits on her sight to the porno dealers. She gets . 18 cents for each new address. She had been earning a little over $100 a month at this until the activity on her site started dropping off. She then found a way to increase her income up to nearly $300 a month. She began extracting names and addresses off all the multi-forwards. She has a program that extracts just the addresses and cleans out all the other text, symbols and coding. She asked me to forward ALL that stuff to her (I don't) and she puts herself on anybody and everybody's mailing lists. If you ever wonder why you keep getting "For XXX hot XXX - click here" emails, now you know.
-Cat

Cathy:

Please! Feel free to use any part of our email rant in your classes. Thank you for the info about selling email addresses. I'm publishing a copy to our comments section.

First thing I have to say is Amen. Most Email clients have "Distribution lists" though most call them Email groups. All MS stuff calls them that and I believe Eudora does too. That should cover most of your PC users right there. Keep up the good work.

Travis Buckley
Owner
Buckley Computing Services
buckman@cableone.net

Found your site in Yahoo! What's New a few days ago and I love "Spam is not the Worst of it". It's really well done.

Although, if it were up to me, I would have had a higher annoyance factor in the "prodigious forwarding section". Man, I wish someone could come up with a way to inform these prodigious people without hurting their feelings. If you do, I really need to know.

Thanks,
Mary Rolfe

I'm taking your article, verbatim, and copying it to every lousy relative in my family for whom I had to search "email etiquette" in the first place. (Hope you don't mind.) If one of them would follow a little advice about how to properly send an email, respond to an email, or any other topic you mentioned, I'm sure the world would be a better place. Or maybe I just wouldn't be so frustrated.

Sincerely;
Kristi Caruso

IntelliCom Communications, LLC
caruso@icc-az.com
623.580.6990

Hey all...

I did a search on "Email etiquette" and found your page - I have an issue that's been developing, and I hope that someone can give me a little bit of advice:

I am an experienced Netizen and network professional, but have many, many family and friends who are new to the Internet. They assume that since they've never heard of Craig Shergold, no one else has either. They assume that the "Good Times" virus is a World-wide catastrophe. They honestly believe that Bill Gates will knock on their door with a handful of $20's, simply for forwarding an e-mail. They consistently practice every single one of the primary no-no's of e-mail - on a daily basis.

To attempt to rectify this problem, I have taken it upon myself to educate each and every one of these people.

One example: I got the "Craig Shergold" letter. I sent the offenders links to Snopes.com (my favorite Urban Legends reference page). I sent them links to the specific page on Snopes.com. I sent them a link to the "Craig Shergold" page on MakeAWish.com.

Next day, from one of them, I got the "E-Mail tax" e-mail.

It seems to be a never-ending battle with stupidity.

Some of these people are rational, intelligent people - what happens when they get a keyboard under their fingers? Is there a tactful way to pass along all of your excellent information without offending them?

Any hints, clues, tips?

Thanks in advance,

Rick Shores

Mr. Shores:

I feel your pain, and I wish I had a good answer. It seems that most of these kinds of offenders won't get it if you are tactful; others won't get it even if you aren't. It all depends on how important each relationship is to you.

Sending links to email etiquette pages, etc. doesn't always work -- even if you can get them to read it. I've tried that with an email list I belong to, where two or three offenders seemed to forward their whole inbox to the list. When I got more specific, the idiots just got pissed. I'm considering getting off that list. They seem to be pretty happy to get all that crap (which may indicate the excitement level of their lives), and their attitude is that if you don't want to read it, you should just delete it.

In one correspondent's case, after doing just what you described, I got so irritated with her continuous dose of legends and hoaxes, I asked her to remove me from all of her address books. I haven't heard from her since, and I'm probably better off.

I have set up a bozo filter for a certain family member that forwards two or three a day. They automatically go into a folder that I could theoretically sort through some day, but if she ever wants to communicate something important and timely, I will probably never know it.

I have been considering setting up an "Email Offender" application to remove the necessity of tact. I need to think through possible abuse dangers, but it could work something like this:

Joe Shmoe logs on to the web site, plugs in addresses of the worst offenders from his address book, selects from the list of abuses, and an email is sent to them all -- BCC -- from the web site, that reads something like "Someone you know doesn't want to hurt your feelings so s/he will remain anonymous. However, s/he would like you to know that you'd be a better netizen if you'd..." text from the list of abuses.

Can you see any problems, concerns with this kind of application? Suggestions would be welcome.

I thought it was just me over reacting to such things as mass forwards and just plain stupid e-mails sent by people who just got access to the net and figure every e-mail deserves to be sent to almost every single person they know of that has an e-mail address just to appear "connected" and "online". I appreciate your site because it proves that e-mail etiquette does exist and should be used. I will be sending the URL to many people.
Thanks,
~amy~

Hello, just to tell you that your email annoyance page is just great - thanks very much for mentioning it on Slashdot.

It's just what I need to give the naive users in my company. It gives them the straight info without patronising or belittling them.

I'm going to forward it to everybody in my address book. :)

Well done and best wishes,

Martyn Dryden.

Hiya all

I absolutely love your page Spam Is Not The Worst Of It !!

It's good to see that someone has taken the time to tell the 'easily-led' about the true do's and don't's of the e-mail system - I have to sysadmin everything around here, and there have been some headless chicken moments when Melissa rampaged through and Love Letters is now on the scene too !

I'll have to get them all to mail plain text, break the caps keys on each PC (forcing lower case !), auto-bin all attachments or just plain disconnect them from the outside world all together !!

Keep up the good work

David Hart

(AKA The Happy Aardvark)

I just wanted to mention another email annoyance: personal web page links after the end of the message(or worse, those that advertise specific free email services), especially to people you regularly send messages to regularly see them. Some email servers allow you to turn off your signature before sending an email (this one doesn't, so sorry if my web page address appears after the end of the message); however, my other email address does allow me to turn off my signature and the advertising link for the free email services. So, those of you that don't have the option of turning your signature on and off when necessary--get an email address that has that option.

Annoyance rating: 4, maybe 5.

Meri

Kudos, and double kudos to you. I plan to send your URL to several of my e-mail buddies. Keep up the good work.
Becki

Whoever you are, I love you. SUPER article.