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Reply-All Email Mistake Leads to Teacher's Dismissal at Marist College Ashgrove
(ashgrovetoday.com.au)
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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In some email clients (including, I believe, at least one of the half-dozen or so different things called "Microsoft Outlook") reply all is the default way to reply, and you have to go out of your way to deliberately reply only to the sender.
This behaviour is, in my opinion, absolutely unconscionable. It’s just a horrendous anti-pattern that benefits nobody.
I wouldn't say reply all being the default benefits nobody. I've been is way too many email chains with 10+ people on copy where everyone needs to be notified and someone replies to just 1 at some point, then people don't get correctly notified and works gets harder. This happened weekly in the email chains I was at, which is I believe a much more recurring issue than someone replying to all when they shouldn't
If reply all were the default that would not happen. Also, usually in an email chain the people that are on copyare there becasue they should be kept up to date with whatever it's being discussed. If you want to say something private, maybe don't reply into a big chain, write a new post or single reply manually.
Not saying that the reverse doesn't have benefits either, I'm just showing you that yeah, reply all being the default DOES have benefits and that it is not a horrendous anti-pattern".
Edit: Damn, the message was "We have amazing IT staff, but recently the big end of town needs to stop feeding at the pool tuck shop and live up to their $250,000 job". I would triple check before sending this. In fact I wouldn't send this, this sound way too risky to send over email, I'd use a new email or Teams.
I would strongly suggest that if you're trying to organise something in that way, email is a woefully incorrect tool to be using for it. Use a group chat like Slack or Teams.
The fact that there are some cases where reply all is appropriate absolutely does not excuse it being the default.
Tell that to consultant jobs where consultant teams and client teams communicate all over email. I agree with you but this is the reality we live in.
Also,
I don't really see the benefit of having reply single as the default. It avoids fuckups like this one, but as stated, I would never say something like this over email.
It would also stop the far-too-common experience of someone replying all when they meant to only send it to one person, annoying and causing distraction to the possibly hundreds of other people included on the original email.
Is it? In a year working in a consultant this happened only once in an internal company email, while chains being lost happened weekly.
I still wish reply all was the default in Outlook, it would make my life so much easier.
It's literally happened to me multiple times this week.
I've never had the scenario you describe happen. Literally never failed to receive an email because someone didn't reply all when they wanted to.