Forward These E-Mail Suggestions From Readers

Forward These E-Mail Suggestions From Readers
By NICK BILTON
Copyright by The New York Times
December 11, 2009, 5:46 PM
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/forward-these-e-mail-suggestions-from-readers/?hpw


Last week I wrote a post titled ‘10 Proposals for Fixing the E-Mail Glut’. I presented an array of ideas like limiting the length of an e-mail, using a smart browsing history and a cold-blooded extermination of the reply-to-all button. The comments generated some great ideas (and a little vitriol), so I wanted to help highlight some of the fun and interesting posts here:

140-Character E-mails
Although originally meant in jest, the idea of limiting emails to 140 characters was taken too seriously by some readers, but I got two fun responses:

First, my personal favorite by David Sanger of California:

Nick. I think limiting email to 140 characters is a superb idea which will reduce unnecessary words. One major problem however, is that ther
Mark of Connecticut already limits his e-mail lengths with the solutions below:

I do about 80% of my e-mails in the subject line. Short and to the point. The nice thing about the message in the subject line - it always gets read.
The End of Reply-to-All
Most readers thought eliminating the reply-to-all button was too drastic. They suggested some great ideas and solutions that might help curb the problem.

Bylo of Waterloo, Ontario:

The message should include the number of potential recipients, as in “Do really want to Reply-to-All 973 users?”
David of Wallingford, Penn.:

One thing I’d add, though: an adjustable sensitivity on the nag, based on the number of recipients. A Reply All to, say, 3 or 4 people would go right through; to 500 might require two or three levels of confirmation.
Chaniacreta:

I tend not to worry about the reply all problem, I simply do not reply in any form to any email with over 6 recipients. I think the problem is not the reply-all but the group mail names.
Some New Suggestions
Jerry W suggests we just use the phone:

I could really use a “just call me” button that would cut off an email chain at the start with my one email and not allow a reply, no more of the endless bounce back and forth readdressing the question.
Daniel Reeves of New York had some interesting ideas too, although an e-mail-snooze button could be bad for the procrastinators out there:

Email Snooze (a snooze button to get a message out of your inbox for 24 hours),
Auto-Expire (automatically archive email after a certain amount of time)
And finally, a fun response was by Olddog Stanley of Virginia, who essentially puts everyone in Spam:

I use Google’s G-Mail. It has a SPAM Filter that I’ve trained over the years to dump messages from those I don’t like too much.