Free Speech!

October 10, 2008 4:16 PM

Mass E-Mail Etiquette Filter: If you send out a mass email espousing your political views on a proposition slated for the next ballot, and somebody else replies to all with a different view, can you be annoyed with them? (more inside)

I hate mass emails and I usually don't even read them. But today I got one about such and such proposition, and then somebody wrote back saying they were voting the other way, and then the original author wrote back:

"can you not reply to all and give your opinions to people you don't even know?"

And so now I'm suddenly interested. Is the author right to be angry at one of his recipients who shared opposing political views with the whole list? Should the recipient have just replied to sender? Or sat silent?

posted by GIRLesq to society & culture (28 comments total)

The original sender has proved his ignorance of email etiquette not once, but twice. If you don't want reply-all problems, don't send a mass email.
posted by GuyZero at 4:21 PM on October 10, 2008 [4 favorites has favorites]

The common term for this sort of person is "hypocrite" and they reap what they sow.
posted by gyusan at 4:22 PM on October 10, 2008

Sending a mass e-mail to people you know, and not putting their addresses in the BCC field, is crappy. So reply-all is fair game, in my opinion.

On the other hand, I find e-mailing people, even those I know, with my political views bad etiquette anyway.
posted by Paragon at 4:23 PM on October 10, 2008 [8 favorites has favorites]

People can be angry or annoyed about anything they want to be angry or annoyed about. If you loudly proclaim your views at a party where you know people, know of others, and have never met some you should expect someone else to also make his/her opinion known. Mass emails are just like loudly proclaiming your personal views at a party, only stupider.

You already hate mass emails, just ignore them.
posted by Science! at 4:23 PM on October 10, 2008

If you send out a mass email espousing your political views...

Then you have opened the floor to anyone who wishes to disagree with you.

However, both you and any repliers have made a serious etiquette breach in sending unsolicited mass email.
posted by tkolar at 4:24 PM on October 10, 2008

My aunt sent out a similar piece. My uncle (her brother) responded with a rather personal attack back on her, talking down to her as a "bleeding heart" liberal and explaining why she wasn't thinking right.

I wrote back with actual facts and such. My personal opinion is that if you're not using BCC (put the email in damn parens, Christ), you're open to whatever. If the other person is an ass about how they respond, or if they attack you directly, that might be a bit crude, but you brought it upon yourself.
posted by disillusioned at 4:24 PM on October 10, 2008

If people have your email address, they can send you email. BCC. Please. Sender included email addresses of people (who are presumably interested in political views) in the message, and thus is totally out of line.
posted by substars at 4:25 PM on October 10, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Including my name on a list of recipients for a "Vote yes on prop 15: kick puppies" e-mail implies that I am either amenable to kicking puppies or that I am undecided on the issue. Although it's probably better to ignore that sort of thing and privately tell the sender to delete me from his/her mailing list, I'm well within my rights to respond. I certainly don't want that list of people thinking I'm pro-puppy kicking. There's the issue of further clogging the inboxes of the rest of the people on the list, but they can choose to read or ignore the response just like they chose to read or ignore the first one. Personally, I wouldn't respond unless I knew the author and the rest of the recipients really well, but I don't think there's anything really wrong with responding that isn't already wrong with sending mass e-mails in the first place.
posted by Meg_Murry at 4:32 PM on October 10, 2008

If someone had "replied all" supporting the views, I'm guessing that the sender wouldn't have had a problem? Sounds like sour grapes...

If the sender stood up in a public forum (Science!'s example of a party is a great analogy) and expressed their views, it would be completely acceptable for someone in the audience to stand up and express their views right back - and everyone there would hear. Email's the same.

I'd be pretty offended if anyone I knew sent an email to me that pushed their political views, with a view to converting me to their way of thinking. If they want to discuss politics with me, then anyone who knows me knows that they can do so 1-2-1 over a pint!

Bad etiquette to send the email in the first place. Anyone who received the email is perfectly within their rights to respond - to all.
posted by finding.perdita at 4:38 PM on October 10, 2008

As a person who responds to political mass mails with relevant links in a reply-all, my assumption has been that the person was interested in a conversation. And if they try to kick back on it, that's the entirety of my answer: "Oh. You had everyone on the mail visible and it's such an important topic, I thought you were trying to start a conversation." I generally only have to do that once, thank goodness.

That means I'm agreeing with everyone else here saying they were already breaking email etiquette and you have nothing to apologise for.
posted by batmonkey at 4:41 PM on October 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

...can you be annoyed with them?

You can feel annoyed all you want. Feelings are just feelings, after all. The way that you choose to express your feelings is the province of etiquette and good manners, and sometimes etiquette requires a certain restraint.

IMHO, neither the sender nor the one who replied showed appropriate restraint.
posted by Robert Angelo at 4:41 PM on October 10, 2008

Umm... just to clarify ... I was neither the author nor the responder here. I was a bystander! I swear it! :-)
posted by GIRLesq at 4:59 PM on October 10, 2008

Use BCC
posted by yoyo_nyc at 5:14 PM on October 10, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

On some level, the original author probably considers their email list their personal little campaigning asset; it's for them and only them to use. To them, the responder is availing themselves of an asset that they had no right to use.

Pulling a Reply-To-All would be akin to pilfering the mailing list from the local campaign HQ. Or following them around as they stick leaflets in mailboxes, and slapping a counter-message sticky note on their material.

That said, the original author is a loon and has no sense of irony.
posted by CKmtl at 5:16 PM on October 10, 2008

You're ALL wrong (sorry, couldn't resist).

Out of curiosity, what kind of mail list is it? At a company? Just a social group?

Makes a difference in my mind as well.

If I am on a webgeek mailing list and someone sends the "Vote yes on prop 15: kick puppies" e-mail I'm going to be a little irritated. It'd be more irritating if it was the "Puppy Love" list. You kinda have to consider your audience as well.
posted by cjorgensen at 5:25 PM on October 10, 2008

My personal rule is that only do a "reply-to-all" when someone is sending out an urban legend or other grossly distorted information. I figure that I'm doing the world a favor if I can convince the recipients that they really don't need to pass it on to everyone that they know.

However, assuming the second person was polite in his/her response, a reply-all does not seem to me to be a major violation. However, i would send an email to the first person suggesting that they learn how to use the BCC feature of their email program.
posted by metahawk at 5:26 PM on October 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

In response to the question "what kind of list is it?" To the best I can determine it's the author's friends, family and coworkers.
posted by GIRLesq at 5:31 PM on October 10, 2008

And setting me up for that reply-all is akin to violating breach laws.

But you know, it's not easy. I got number 486 in a serious from my sainted mother, which include 87 of my closest relatives on the CC line.

And I got all huffy and took the numbers she had in her email, and went to the source for those numbers, and then a better source for those very same numbers, and then created a spreadsheet that put those dollar amounts in the context of percentage of campaign donations total for each candidate, wrote up a text box sidebar with hyperlinks explaining where there may be crossover/confusion with certain types of industries, and then I made a pie chart showing how those industry donations comprised the whole donation pie for each candidate, and I was stewing about how to code or made a bubble chart for what is known about personal contributions from people in those industries so that my final PDF would be perfect... and then I realized that was INSANE and went outside to play Chuck It Squirrel with the dogs.

But what if I didn't have dogs? What then? Oh... it's so easy to be careless with email. Just don't spam. Just don't spam.

And besides, if you have to tell everyone, it's not that hard to send the same mail to a slew of individuals.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 5:32 PM on October 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The original author is the only person who doesn't have a good reason to be snippy.
posted by rodgerd at 5:45 PM on October 10, 2008

If you send out a mass email espousing your political views....

After those first 11 words of the question, I was pretty sure I knew my answer.

As most have said, both the original sender and the reply-all'er were in the wrong here, and the original sender committed the graver offense since he couldn't even claim 'oops' or that the spammed position so offended him that.... etc.
posted by rokusan at 6:27 PM on October 10, 2008

When I've received mass e-mails with political views, I've found that simply replying to all with "unsubscribe" sends a powerful message.
posted by BobbyVan at 6:59 PM on October 10, 2008 [3 favorites has favorites]

Mass E-Mail Etiquette

Oxymoron! Come on.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:15 PM on October 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'll admit to having broken the reply-to-all side of this rule once or twice, but only to correct remarkably bad computer information. I really didn't need all the phone calls I was going to get from friends who had, as instructed, deleted the HORRIBLE VIRUS!!1! that was disguising itself as a a key system file!
posted by JaredSeth at 8:32 PM on October 10, 2008

The greater transgression was committed by the person who e-mailed a group that large without using Bcc. Of course, I'm guessing the second person probably did that too. If so, then they're equally wrong.
posted by grouse at 8:47 PM on October 10, 2008

It's your right to be annoyed, but that doesn't mean you're not in the wrong.

BCC fields usually take care of this, and I wish most of the people I work with would use it when sending political emails.
posted by sjuhawk31 at 8:56 PM on October 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

The greater transgression was committed by the person who e-mailed a group that large without using Bcc. about their political beliefs
posted by inigo2 at 9:03 PM on October 10, 2008

I've had this exact situation occur to me. A guy who is seeing a family member of mine added me to his list of people he sent mass mails to. He sent me, and everyone else, an email about how the BNP were getting public funding (along with every other political party) to print local campaign literature. I responded to the list saying that I thought that was fine, because, while I thought they were a bunch of thuggish racists, they had passed the legal tests for definition as political party in the UK and if you wanted to cut public funding for their campaign, you should cut it for everyone. My point was basically that you couldn't pick and choose which speech you agreed with, unless there were actually trying to start a riot or incite murder. I was also making the point that this was way better than further marginalising the BNP and letting them feel they had been victimised, because that's just grist to their racist mill.

I got a load of ad-hominem bullshit back from him saying I didn't know what I was talking about and I was an armchair liberal dewy eyed idealist who hadn't seen what the NF did in the Eighties blah blah blah. Plus an admonishment that I had offended a load of people on his mailing list. To which I replied - well, you've clearly missed the fact that email is a conversational tool, not a broadcast method - take me off your list you hypocritical wanker.
posted by Happy Dave at 2:28 AM on October 11, 2008

Both original sender and replier are jerks, but original sender is a dumbass (for not using BCC) and a hypocrite (for complaining about someone doing the exact same thing they did, when they were in fact the instigator and facilitator of the action) to boot.
posted by nanojath at 12:43 PM on October 11, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]