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Something similar happened (multiple times?) when I worked at AWS when someone decided to send a mass email to literally the entire company and people inevitabl

Something similar happened (multiple times?) when I worked at AWS when someone decided to send a mass email to literally the entire company and people inevitably reply-all enough to clog the system and bring it to its knees. Many confused people were replying "UNSUBSCRIBE" (again, to the whole company) as if it would take them off

avereveard 4y ago
> replying "UNSUBSCRIBE" Once upon a time that was the accepted albeit snarky way to inform senders they were misusing the to field and that the recipient was not interested in the message I would definitely still use it for that, albeit wouldn't use it within a reply all.
hinkley 4y ago
Then you get a group of people panicked about the panic who start replying all saying please stop replying all to this email, and then people replying to them to point out how they are just making the problem worse...
- Akronymus 4y ago
  Or a few people have autoreplies that they are out of the office...
  - hinkley 4y ago
    Hey it's a party, everyone is invited!
- dvtrn 4y ago
  right clicks thread, mouses over “create new rule”, begins sweating profusely
nonameiguess 4y ago
This happened to the entire US federal government in 2014. Someone reply-all'd a mailing from the General Fund Enterprise Business System notification asking to be taken off the list, and it escalated as then thousands of people who didn't realize they were on this list did the same thing, then got worse when smart asses reply-all'd telling other people not to reply-all.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Part of the problem is from admins creating lists and putting users on them without user knowing anything about it. Can you blame users for being confused and seeking to get off a list in the only way they know how? IT Admins bare blame in these incidents. The users just make it fun for everyone but IT, but IT hopefully sees the fun later when they aren't running around putting out the fire
  - dvtrn 4y ago
    IT Admins bare blame in these incidents. May I amend this to say "IT policies" are to blame? Thinking back to my own days in the IT Department, I would have LOVED to say "No" to the requests to make yet another distribution list for a Senior Manager or Director, full of everyone and their assistants for the very same reason as you (plus a few other reasons), but that was just one of the many things I had a lot of power to execute but next to no power to actually influence-at least if I had any expectation of keeping my job and not getting chewed out for balking at such requests. Memory goes back to the two worst IT Admin positions I held, both were in high volume calling environments, both involved people constantly moving between teams, managers renaming teams, trading personnel, moving people between groups, hot desking--all of which involved the constant creation and distruction of distribution groups, ring groups, hunt groups etcetera in ADUC, hot phones, not to mention the nesting of groups within groups within groups, and no amount of "showing my work" to the Director or IT Management to show how nothing was getting done except beating our Exchange Server into a bloody mess got any movement from anyone in leadership So I quit trying, and eventually just quit.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- lwswl 4y ago
  state duplication
Kostchei 4y ago
when you are oncall and people who are not oncall keep replying to the oncall email in response to the not-incident making pager duty go off like a frog in a sock ..stop it.. I say.. but not reply-all.. 'cause then you footgun again
gadders 4y ago
I LOVE reply-all email storms. Used to happen a lot more in the 90's and 00's. I was on one in an investment bank and in the end the Chief of Staff for the division replied-all with "The next person to reply-all to this email chain will be sacked."
teekert 4y ago
I work at a large healthcare company and we also lost email for an afternoon because of this. The funniest thing is that you get responses like: “All, I know I’m replying to all as well, but let me be the last and let’s just stop it.” … Not realizing that all those similar emails have been send in the hours before and are just now finding their way through the clogged system. It’s like a DOS attack driven by Human amplification.

avereveard 4y ago

> replying "UNSUBSCRIBE" Once upon a time that was the accepted albeit snarky way to inform senders they were misusing the to field and that the recipient was not interested in the message I would definitely still use it for that, albeit wouldn't use it within a reply all.

hinkley 4y ago

Then you get a group of people panicked about the panic who start replying all saying please stop replying all to this email, and then people replying to them to point out how they are just making the problem worse...

Akronymus 4y ago
Or a few people have autoreplies that they are out of the office...
- hinkley 4y ago
  Hey it's a party, everyone is invited!
dvtrn 4y ago
right clicks thread, mouses over “create new rule”, begins sweating profusely

nonameiguess 4y ago

This happened to the entire US federal government in 2014. Someone reply-all'd a mailing from the General Fund Enterprise Business System notification asking to be taken off the list, and it escalated as then thousands of people who didn't realize they were on this list did the same thing, then got worse when smart asses reply-all'd telling other people not to reply-all.

dylan604 4y ago
Part of the problem is from admins creating lists and putting users on them without user knowing anything about it. Can you blame users for being confused and seeking to get off a list in the only way they know how? IT Admins bare blame in these incidents. The users just make it fun for everyone but IT, but IT hopefully sees the fun later when they aren't running around putting out the fire
- dvtrn 4y ago
  IT Admins bare blame in these incidents. May I amend this to say "IT policies" are to blame? Thinking back to my own days in the IT Department, I would have LOVED to say "No" to the requests to make yet another distribution list for a Senior Manager or Director, full of everyone and their assistants for the very same reason as you (plus a few other reasons), but that was just one of the many things I had a lot of power to execute but next to no power to actually influence-at least if I had any expectation of keeping my job and not getting chewed out for balking at such requests. Memory goes back to the two worst IT Admin positions I held, both were in high volume calling environments, both involved people constantly moving between teams, managers renaming teams, trading personnel, moving people between groups, hot desking--all of which involved the constant creation and distruction of distribution groups, ring groups, hunt groups etcetera in ADUC, hot phones, not to mention the nesting of groups within groups within groups, and no amount of "showing my work" to the Director or IT Management to show how nothing was getting done except beating our Exchange Server into a bloody mess got any movement from anyone in leadership So I quit trying, and eventually just quit.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
lwswl 4y ago
state duplication

Kostchei 4y ago

when you are oncall and people who are not oncall keep replying to the oncall email in response to the not-incident making pager duty go off like a frog in a sock ..stop it.. I say.. but not reply-all.. 'cause then you footgun again

gadders 4y ago

I LOVE reply-all email storms. Used to happen a lot more in the 90's and 00's. I was on one in an investment bank and in the end the Chief of Staff for the division replied-all with "The next person to reply-all to this email chain will be sacked."

teekert 4y ago

I work at a large healthcare company and we also lost email for an afternoon because of this. The funniest thing is that you get responses like: “All, I know I’m replying to all as well, but let me be the last and let’s just stop it.” … Not realizing that all those similar emails have been send in the hours before and are just now finding their way through the clogged system. It’s like a DOS attack driven by Human amplification.