Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Pet Peeve: Return Receipts

I will respond to your email when I respond to your email. You don't need to know that I read your email immediately and then didn't respond immediately. And I don't need that kind of pressure!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol sometimes I'm like that too...especially when it comes with comments and replies and stuff like that. I feel kinda bad though, its not that I don't care or anything. Its just, well, exactly what you said. ^_^

Anonymous said...

I never send return receipts. I think they're bad etiquette.

Anonymous said...

They ARE bad (n)etiquette. But then, so are top-posting (putting your reply above, instead of below, what you're replying to), failing to trim excess replies, forwarding without trimming, anti-spam software that makes others confirm their e-mails, etc. That doesn't stop many people these days.

Fortunately my e-mail client is smart enough to not violate my privacy by sending return receipts (technically DSN's...Delivery Status Notifications). Now we just have to figure out how to make the people who send e-mail as smart as the software....

Heather Meadows said...

I top-post if I'm not responding to several items. If there's a bunch of stuff I have to get specific about, I put my replies to each item right after each one.

Top-posting makes trimming less necessary, since you don't have to wade through all the crap to find the response...

Outlook is annoying because it defaults to HTML and you have to mess with it to get it to go to plain text and put > signs next to what you're responding to. But that's what I use regardless!

I can tell Outlook not to respond to any return receipts as well, but I let it prompt me each time, just in case the whim hits me that yes, I do want someone to know when I'm checking my email.

Anonymous said...

Outlook is just 0wnage waiting to happen.

Top-posting makes trimming less *clearly* necessary, but it's still just as much a waste of space, bandwidth, and mail archive resources. But top-posting is wrong anyway because it improperly arranges the text and the context. Like so:

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: That's called top-posting. It's bad.
Q: Why not?
A: No.
Q: Should I put my reply before quoted text?

*end soapbox*

Anonymous said...

Sorry. Gunna have to count on senses of humor here with this one.

D
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:>

Heather Meadows said...

ROFLMAO

Michael- At least I don't use Outlook Express :>

I hate top-posted forums for the reason you describe. But as far as work emails go, top-posting saves time. I don't have to read the whole train of thought because I've been a participant the whole time...but it is nice to have it there to refer to if I need to. Meanwhile, the most important part--the latest information--is conveniently at the top where I can get to it quickly.

It's funny, there's a guy here at work who always responds at the bottom of my emails, and it annoys me that I have to scroll. The first time he did it, I wondered if he had accidentally sent me a blank message!