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"If everyone would just stop replying, this would end! Why are you all still hitting reply all?!" -latest reply all on every reply-all storm. In my early days

by mabbo 3y ago

"If everyone would just stop replying, this would end! Why are you all still hitting reply all?!" -latest reply all on every reply-all storm. In my early days at Amazon, around 2012-2015, this would happen frequently enough [0]. I pretty quickly learned the best thing to do was to ignore the conversation and never think about it again rather than try to 'help'. [0] - too many new products and orgs set up new mailing lists with 5000+ people on it, most of whom had no idea what it was. Growing pains.

jraph 3y ago
Never really happened to me, but Thunderbird has a pretty good feature for this case: "Ignore message thread". I'm sure other mail clients have this feature as well. If someone is bothered by such a thread, it's really easy to avoid.
- bhandziuk 3y ago
  If people understood this feature they probably would also understand why they are in a reply-all storm and not need that feature.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  It happened to me in a large company I worked with. Someone, probably an admin sent an email to the entire company, literally tens of thousands of people in the "To:" field. Of course, a few of them replied-all, then others replied to tell people to stop replying, etc... The server couldn't follow and mail couldn't be delivered fast enough, prompting even more replies. Email unrelated to the incident took 30 minutes to come through. Admins had to intervene, and the servers were down for about 4 hours, everything related to the incident was deleted server-side, and probably blacklisted too. The client couldn't do much, we didn't even get that many emails (a few dozens at most) since the server couldn't deliver them. It was a very expensive email for sure.
- nytesky 3y ago
  gmail has the “mute” feature single key press ‘m’ away. I admit have been tempted to respond to some reply-all maelstrom mailstorms to herald the mute key…
teddyh 3y ago
• The story of Bedlam3: <https://rodneymbliss.com/2013/10/17/i-survived-bedlam3/ https://rodneymbliss.com/2013/10/17/i-survived-bedlam3/> • Ornk! <https://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-sea-lions https://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-sea-lions>
karlkatzke 3y ago
I’m apparently still known for my snark during a reply-all storm at TAMU on an internal mailing list, 15 years ago.
- noman-land 3y ago
  Well now you gotta tell us the story.
_notreallyme_ 3y ago
At amazon in 2010, someone sent an email to everyone on the "all" mailing list to ask if anyone had seen it. A reply-all storm ensued, and despite several people asking to stop hitting the reply-all button, it continued for several days. The management had to chime in and sometimes threatened people with punishment if they continued participating to the reply-all storm. If you ignored the conversation you may not have seen it, but most reply-all storm ended up with someone saying something the line of "we don't care about your wallet". Anyway, asking people to stop hitting the reply-all button is far from being the latest reply-all on these kind of things...
- thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
  >> If you ignored the conversation you may not have seen it, but most reply-all storm ended up with someone saying something the line of "we don't care about your wallet". Not quite. It started with a meeting invite that was accidentally sent to everyone. The meeting was for the Amazon Wallet team (I think they did something with payments, etc.) for whatever work they were doing at the time. Most people ignored the meeting invite and just deleted it, but someone hit "Reply All" and said something to the effect of "I know this meeting invite was not for me, but I wanted to make sure that whoever was supposed to get it did not miss the meeting." From there, it turned into a "Reply All" storm with lots of people replying all with "Please do not reply all". Others thought it was funny and sent memes. One guy was so bold to promote his indie rock band that was taking off. The incident is famous and became known as "Wallet", but the name comes from the Amazon Wallet team.
  - throwa123arst 3y ago
    There's a video on Broadcast of Russ Grandinetti emceeing an all hands, and he opens with stats from the Wallet incident. It is hilarious, folks at Amazon should watch it.
  - _notreallyme_ 3y ago
    Ah, thank you for more context. I arrived a few months after that, so someone tried to explain to me but either my memory is wrong or the explanation was flawed.
neongodzilla 3y ago
This shit still happens with regularity.

by mabbo 3y ago

jraph 3y ago

Never really happened to me, but Thunderbird has a pretty good feature for this case: "Ignore message thread". I'm sure other mail clients have this feature as well. If someone is bothered by such a thread, it's really easy to avoid.

bhandziuk 3y ago
If people understood this feature they probably would also understand why they are in a reply-all storm and not need that feature.
GuB-42 3y ago
It happened to me in a large company I worked with. Someone, probably an admin sent an email to the entire company, literally tens of thousands of people in the "To:" field. Of course, a few of them replied-all, then others replied to tell people to stop replying, etc... The server couldn't follow and mail couldn't be delivered fast enough, prompting even more replies. Email unrelated to the incident took 30 minutes to come through. Admins had to intervene, and the servers were down for about 4 hours, everything related to the incident was deleted server-side, and probably blacklisted too. The client couldn't do much, we didn't even get that many emails (a few dozens at most) since the server couldn't deliver them. It was a very expensive email for sure.
nytesky 3y ago
gmail has the “mute” feature single key press ‘m’ away. I admit have been tempted to respond to some reply-all maelstrom mailstorms to herald the mute key…

teddyh 3y ago

• The story of Bedlam3: <https://rodneymbliss.com/2013/10/17/i-survived-bedlam3/ https://rodneymbliss.com/2013/10/17/i-survived-bedlam3/> • Ornk! <https://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-sea-lions https://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/on-sea-lions>

karlkatzke 3y ago

I’m apparently still known for my snark during a reply-all storm at TAMU on an internal mailing list, 15 years ago.

noman-land 3y ago
Well now you gotta tell us the story.

_notreallyme_ 3y ago

At amazon in 2010, someone sent an email to everyone on the "all" mailing list to ask if anyone had seen it. A reply-all storm ensued, and despite several people asking to stop hitting the reply-all button, it continued for several days. The management had to chime in and sometimes threatened people with punishment if they continued participating to the reply-all storm. If you ignored the conversation you may not have seen it, but most reply-all storm ended up with someone saying something the line of "we don't care about your wallet". Anyway, asking people to stop hitting the reply-all button is far from being the latest reply-all on these kind of things...

thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
>> If you ignored the conversation you may not have seen it, but most reply-all storm ended up with someone saying something the line of "we don't care about your wallet". Not quite. It started with a meeting invite that was accidentally sent to everyone. The meeting was for the Amazon Wallet team (I think they did something with payments, etc.) for whatever work they were doing at the time. Most people ignored the meeting invite and just deleted it, but someone hit "Reply All" and said something to the effect of "I know this meeting invite was not for me, but I wanted to make sure that whoever was supposed to get it did not miss the meeting." From there, it turned into a "Reply All" storm with lots of people replying all with "Please do not reply all". Others thought it was funny and sent memes. One guy was so bold to promote his indie rock band that was taking off. The incident is famous and became known as "Wallet", but the name comes from the Amazon Wallet team.
- throwa123arst 3y ago
  There's a video on Broadcast of Russ Grandinetti emceeing an all hands, and he opens with stats from the Wallet incident. It is hilarious, folks at Amazon should watch it.
- _notreallyme_ 3y ago
  Ah, thank you for more context. I arrived a few months after that, so someone tried to explain to me but either my memory is wrong or the explanation was flawed.

neongodzilla 3y ago

This shit still happens with regularity.