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AirGunEric · Site Admin

Lately, it seems to me that more and more people have decided that email should be structured like some sort of "tweet" thing- one "stand alone" message sent instead of attaching a/the full prior message thread.

From a personal-type email perspective, if one is discussing politics via email, and only "stand alone" messages are sent (no prior messages attached in the email)- how does one make references to previous statements or assertions? Go back through a pile of other "stand alone" emails from "Fred" until they find the reference? Good way to kill 20 minutes, apparently.

Now- put this into a business scenario. I go and ask for pricing on -something- from a vendor via email, I get a response with my original request(s) attached. I then send a "stand alone" message to the vendor asking more questions relating to the last email- but with no attachments- so, presumably the vendor is going to have to search through dozens, or maybe hundreds of emails from people to locate the last back-forth to determine context. The vendor replies, and I send another "stand alone" email with no attachments asking further questions. Vendor then has to search again through piles of emails to find out the prior context/communication chain- but now needs to look at multiple emails to ensure they are replying to the "whole picture"- again spending a great deal of time and effort because I cannot seem to click the "attach prior message thread" box in my email client. Then, when the vendor hasn't responded promptly to my every email in precise detail, I feel I am being ignored/not valued- despite the fact I have upped the effort required to respond properly from a couple minutes to multiple times that.

This has only been a recent situation for me- and I am failing to understand why(?) Even people who did not do this previously have seemingly started.

Upon doing a search for email etiquette- I find my issue is not new, and the writers of internet "manners" specify this constantly. Some samples:

"Don't leave out the message thread.

When you reply to an email, you must include the original mail in your reply, in other words click 'Reply', instead of 'New Mail'. Some people say that you must remove the previous message since this has already been sent and is therefore unnecessary. However, I could not agree less. If you receive many emails you obviously cannot remember each individual email. This means that a 'threadless email' will not provide enough information and you will have to spend a frustratingly long time to find out the context of the email in order to deal with it. Leaving the thread might take a fraction longer in download time, but it will save the recipient much more time and frustration in looking for the related emails in their inbox!"

and

"Once you send that first e-mail, you will probably get a response. If you want to reply to that response what should you do? The wrong thing to do is to start a new e-mail message. This breaks the link (called a "thread") between the original message and your soon-to-be-created response. Without the link, it can get difficult for the users on each end to follow the sequence of messages, especially after several exchanges. This becomes an even larger problem when you are dealing with newsgroups (more later) where several people may be replying to messages and trying to follow the thread of exchanged information. The correct thing to do is to reply, which is essentially the same thing as creating a new message, but maintains the thread."

I think my real point here is that "communication" is a two-way street, and in the case of email, if prior messages/email content is not left in a message- this communication breaks down far too easily and attempts to pick it up/continue take a much higher level of time and effort- which serves no one.

-anyways, rant mode -off-

Mark5043 · Silver Status Member

Very well said Eric.....yes it does get frustrating..

Bozo · Veteran Member

Good rant, Eric. Add to that an apparent inability to spell or even use a spell checker, and the email/post becomes that much harder to read.

yourdaddyjoe · Supporting Member

I'm with ya on that Eric....

eBay communication is finally catching up with your point you're making... It was horrid trying to track conversations with customers...

But.... still...

LittleRickie · Member

I've found with some e-mails that people that break or delete part of a thread are just covering their a$$ because they have screwed up and the don't want a trail of evidence if blow in.

After several attempts I get really POd so I just reconstruct the e-mail with cut and past and sent it to their bosses boss and ask if they can help straighten this out for me. Faq-U

JustMatt · Member

Sorry guys, I delete out the old messages when I reply. I find that email clients end up mangling the original messages for back and forth conversations (especially with a boat load of >>>>>>>>>'s and header info) so I end up getting rid of it. I do not delete any emails and so if there is pertinent information in the previous message that needs to be re sent, I format the excerpt in my new message. Gmail automatically threads all responses and I can manually thread them if somebody gets back to me without using the Re: option. Honestly, anybody who deletes a message portion as a CYA move clearly does not understand how email works. Also, by leaving the old messages in new emails, more false positives can show up when I actually do have to search for something.

I have never used twitter (twitted? twotten? I don't know...) and I do not even have a facebook account so my habit does not come from any of that. I think it has something to do with being comfortable using digital systems and data filing/storage. If the data is already saved and indexed somewhere, it does not need to be repeated over and over again.

Just figured I would throw out some reasons why some people might do this. Sorry for being a pain in the a$$, I just figured everybody was as organized as me. :P