3 ms·
I've never seen "group emails" working, even when amongst technical people. Part of it is just how emails work, part of it is how each clients work, part of it
by wiether 3mo ago
I've never seen "group emails" working, even when amongst technical people.
Part of it is just how emails work, part of it is how each clients work, part of it is people not knowing/caring.
You'll have:
- the guy that don't use the group email address as recipient, but personal email address
- the guy that change the subject which starts a new thread/discussion
- the guy that include all previous emails in their answer
- the guy with a signature that takes two screens to scroll
- the guy with an awful text font/color
- the guy that CC their whole address book, including the group email address, for personal stuff
- ...
I can go on. I went through this mess many times during the years, in various contexts; always the same result.
- LoganDark 3mo agoSubject lines shouldn't be relied on to identify emails. In-Reply-To / References exists in most clients if the mailing list specifies a Message-ID...
- brudgers 3mo agoSubject lines have always been the best way and most emails could be nothing but subject line if blank bodies were allowed. But because subject lines are more work and people who love sending email tend to love it because it is very low effort, the venn of email senders and those who write subject lines is small.
- teddyh 3mo agoHere’s how you do it: <https://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html>
- deathanatos 3mo agoThat site seems to serve offensive images¹. (¹yes, it seems like you can work around it by going to the URL de novo, … but IDK, doesn't seem worth it.)
- fragmede 3mo agoLol jwz still has the HN referrer image set.
- brudgers 3mo agoThreading does not change the ways email sucks.
- bobthepanda 3mo agoeven in the best scenarios, a well organized group of people is not using all the features of email "properly" to say nothing of groups that are supposed to have the general public.
- DANmode 3mo agoI have. For hackerspaces, tech meetups, book clubs, cycling clubs, city cleanup volunteer groups… It works fine. Don’t let your bad experience ruin it for everyone. Especially with an administrative backend, email-based distribution and comms works great for smaller groups!
- WhyNotHugo 3mo agoI move into a neighbourhood of new houses in 2007. One of the guys there worked IT at a university and set up a mailing list of the neighbourhood. It was used successfully for all sorts of coordination, neighbourhood watch, internal news, etc. There's always someone mis-using it, and the same applies to every other platform. There's always someone hijacking forum threads, or asking questions in comments instead of starting a new topic. None of this is exclusive to email.
- teeray 3mo agoHijacking threads was a problem on our neighborhood mailing list (the most egregious example being hijacking a welcome thread to complain about trash pickup). The solution was pretty easy: auto-lock threads after a week of inactivity. We found that on-topic discussion settled after about that long. People are then forced to start new threads. If there is something new on an old thread, it can be administratively resurrected.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]