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We had a Social email loop when I worked for a company with 33k employees. Someone sent out a newsletter to the company ALL mailbox, which had some tips for win

We had a Social email loop when I worked for a company with 33k employees. Someone sent out a newsletter to the company ALL mailbox, which had some tips for winterizing, and asked mostly rhetorically "What are your tips for preparing for winter?" A handful people replied to the entire company w/o realizing it - stuff like "Well I'm in California, I don't have to worry about it. Ha!". I think it would have ended there. But some grumpy programmer in NYC of course decided to reply "People. Stop replying-all!" One would think being a programmer he'd be smart enough to reply to just the people who had unintentionally spammed the whole company. But no. He spammed the whole company. And after that it was on. Dozens of emails a minute. Tons of replies like "Please take me off this list." Tons more grumpy people complaining. Big bosses pulling rank "Ok I am Vice President of muckety muck and we need to stop this replying all right now!" And the best: "Stop replying all to everyone to tell them to stop replying all!" - replied to all of course. O_o It didn't help that a lot of people worked in labs and shared computers. So they'd log on and see a ton of emails w/o knowing what happened. By the end of the week it finally died down. Then the next Monday people came back from vacation, saw 500+ emails, and of course asked to be taken off the list. This went on for weeks before it finally trickled to a halt. Why anyone was allowed to spam the entire company, or the address couldn't be blocked, I have no idea. I was tempted to use it to fish for a tennis partner. And then apologize and claim ignorance of course.

WeAreGoingIn 8y ago
What a hilarious story. Talking about email ethics. I remember myself doing a similar mistake, new at work. This old timer came barging into my cubicle and commanding me to “stop emailing all!”.
gerdesj 8y ago
In the UK the National Health Service is a fair old size. A test message caused a few snags for a while: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/31/nhs_reply_all_email_fail_half_billion_messages/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/31/nhs_reply_all_email...
samprotas 8y ago
This exact same thing happened at DuPont about 5 years ago. I believe there were roughly 80k employees at the time. There was essentially no real work email for most of the day until I believe IT figured out how to add a whitelist for @company emails. My theory was, when they switched from LotusNotes to Outlook, they never ported over years of worth of experience encoded in user permissions. At least that fits well with the warning people always give about re-writing legacy software....
theoh 8y ago
> I think it would have ended there. But some grumpy programmer in NYC of course decided to reply "People. Stop replying-all!" One would think being a programmer he'd be smart enough to reply to just the people who had unintentionally spammed the whole company. But no. He spammed the whole company. It's probably because he felt that he was in a position of expertise and authority that he tried to pre-empt the problem by telling everyone not to reply to the list. One last message to all, then the problem would be definitively solved, or so the logic would go.
- bonaldi 8y ago
  If he had such expertise he should have sent his reply with all the recipients on bcc. Then even if a few people do reply they only go to him and things fizzle quite quickly. I don’t quite why so few people break reply storms in this way. Bcc isn’t _that_ mysterious.
  - theoh 8y ago
    The reason is that a bcc'd message doesn't stop people from replying to earlier messages in the thread, whether or not they are using a threading email client. Threaded email reading interfaces probably make your strategy more effective, but they don't eliminate the possibility that people will respond to earlier messages, defeating your "firebreak" message (the more addressees, the more likely it is).
    - bonaldi 8y ago
      That's true, but it definitely works a charm in Outlook shops — Outlook tries to get you to reply to the latest message in a number of ways.
delinka 8y ago
When I hear these stories, I wonder why the boneheads writing the original don't just put the distribution list in BCC. Reply-All neutered. In a recent experience, I Replied to All (in BCC) to explain how BCC works and all the replies to my email stayed off the list.
- michaelcampbell 8y ago
  And bypassed everyone's filters for list mail. Bravo.
  - jsjohnst 8y ago
    Setup your filters correctly and that’s not an issue. “From” is rarely the right header to use for an email list filter.
    - michaelcampbell 8y ago
      This doesn't even make sense; a filter that filters on From: wouldn't detect the sender having used a bcc:. To: is more the issue here.
      - jsjohnst 8y ago
        I meant to say To, my mistake there. That doesn’t negate my point, almost all mailing lists include a List-ID and/or other similar fields. That’s included even when the list was bcc’d and is what you should be filtering on, not the To: field. Gmail even uses it automatically when you click on a message from a mailing list and click “filter messages like this”.
ndesaulniers 8y ago
At Google we adoringly call these "centi-threads."
bryanrasmussen 8y ago
Ok well it might be a company I know, similar thing happened at an old workplace, but the funny thing was the company I was at had been sold off about a month and a half before, but we were all still receiving email from the old company!

WeAreGoingIn 8y ago

What a hilarious story. Talking about email ethics. I remember myself doing a similar mistake, new at work. This old timer came barging into my cubicle and commanding me to “stop emailing all!”.

gerdesj 8y ago

In the UK the National Health Service is a fair old size. A test message caused a few snags for a while: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/31/nhs_reply_all_email_fail_half_billion_messages/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/31/nhs_reply_all_email...

samprotas 8y ago

This exact same thing happened at DuPont about 5 years ago. I believe there were roughly 80k employees at the time. There was essentially no real work email for most of the day until I believe IT figured out how to add a whitelist for @company emails. My theory was, when they switched from LotusNotes to Outlook, they never ported over years of worth of experience encoded in user permissions. At least that fits well with the warning people always give about re-writing legacy software....

theoh 8y ago

> I think it would have ended there. But some grumpy programmer in NYC of course decided to reply "People. Stop replying-all!" One would think being a programmer he'd be smart enough to reply to just the people who had unintentionally spammed the whole company. But no. He spammed the whole company. It's probably because he felt that he was in a position of expertise and authority that he tried to pre-empt the problem by telling everyone not to reply to the list. One last message to all, then the problem would be definitively solved, or so the logic would go.

bonaldi 8y ago
If he had such expertise he should have sent his reply with all the recipients on bcc. Then even if a few people do reply they only go to him and things fizzle quite quickly. I don’t quite why so few people break reply storms in this way. Bcc isn’t _that_ mysterious.
- theoh 8y ago
  The reason is that a bcc'd message doesn't stop people from replying to earlier messages in the thread, whether or not they are using a threading email client. Threaded email reading interfaces probably make your strategy more effective, but they don't eliminate the possibility that people will respond to earlier messages, defeating your "firebreak" message (the more addressees, the more likely it is).
  - bonaldi 8y ago
    That's true, but it definitely works a charm in Outlook shops — Outlook tries to get you to reply to the latest message in a number of ways.

delinka 8y ago

When I hear these stories, I wonder why the boneheads writing the original don't just put the distribution list in BCC. Reply-All neutered. In a recent experience, I Replied to All (in BCC) to explain how BCC works and all the replies to my email stayed off the list.

michaelcampbell 8y ago
And bypassed everyone's filters for list mail. Bravo.
- jsjohnst 8y ago
  Setup your filters correctly and that’s not an issue. “From” is rarely the right header to use for an email list filter.
  - michaelcampbell 8y ago
    This doesn't even make sense; a filter that filters on From: wouldn't detect the sender having used a bcc:. To: is more the issue here.
    - jsjohnst 8y ago
      I meant to say To, my mistake there. That doesn’t negate my point, almost all mailing lists include a List-ID and/or other similar fields. That’s included even when the list was bcc’d and is what you should be filtering on, not the To: field. Gmail even uses it automatically when you click on a message from a mailing list and click “filter messages like this”.

ndesaulniers 8y ago

At Google we adoringly call these "centi-threads."

bryanrasmussen 8y ago

Ok well it might be a company I know, similar thing happened at an old workplace, but the funny thing was the company I was at had been sold off about a month and a half before, but we were all still receiving email from the old company!