NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Oops! - Microsoft's New Feature Guaranteed to Lose Important E-Mail
Oops! - Microsoft's New Feature Guaranteed to Lose Important E-Mail
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000595.html
Greetings. The bright boys at Microsoft have come up with a new
feature for Office 2010 that -- from the description I've seen of this
aspect so far -- seems guaranteed to turn some Outlook users into the
e-mail equivalent of black holes.
Essentially, it sounds simple enough. Provide the ability to
instantly delete all messages associated with an e-mail thread in
which you're a CC member -- *including all future messages* from the
conversation. ( http://bit.ly/ignore-box-image )
Some reviewers, presumably of the more anal personality type, are
lauding this feature as the best development since sliced bread. They
suggest it's more efficient and polite than asking to be taken off a
CC list.
The problems of course should be obvious to almost any e-mail user who
stops to think about it for a bit.
I don't know whether this MS mechanism uses Subject lines, References
lines, or some combination of both to make its thread determinations,
but I do know this: E-mail Subjects Drift!
We've all experienced this -- I've been noting it for decades.
Because most people are lax about updating Subject lines as a
discussion evolves and rely on the "reply" command, single e-mail
threads can quickly diverge in unexpected (and often extreme) ways
with Subject lines that no longer represent the actual topic of
discussion.
So with Microsoft's new feature, you run the significant risk of
cutting yourself off from a discussion that has moved in a direction
that you would want or need to be reading. Even worse, the other
members of the CC list will continue to see you listed on all of the
messages (the "ignore" feature, at least from what I've heard so far,
*doesn't provide any notification* to other recipients or the
message author that you've activated the deletion feature for future
messages). So they'll all quite reasonably assume that you're up to
date on the continuing discussion.
And given the habit that many people have of starting a brand new
discussion with an existing CC group by replying to an old message
thread (and often failing to update the Subject line in the process)
the risks of such an auto-delete system seem even more stark.
One can argue that e-mail users shouldn't be so "sloppy" in their mail
handling procedures. But that assertion plus $1 will buy you a cup of
cheap coffee, and not much else of value. People are people.
Overall, it seems certain that Microsoft's new concept in proactive
e-mail deletion will result in vast numbers of lost important
messages, misunderstandings, confusion, and maybe worse.
Microsoft needs to reconsider the human engineering aspects of this new
Office functionality. It certainly appears that they didn't think
very long about the serious negative implications up to now.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein