US Army officer reply-all E-mail chain causes pandemonium

https://www.military.com/daily-news/opinions/2023/02/09/army-officer-email-chain-caused-pandemonium.html

by jcalvinowens • 3 years ago

28 12 3 years ago

hunglee2• 3 years ago

Why does reply all even exist on email? Crazy how in 2023 we are still relying on email etiquette a.k.a 'common sense' to prevent hugely disruptive interrupts like this. Can it even be disabled by admin?

panda88888• 3 years ago

Isn’t reply all a client side function? It just fills in the to and cc fields for the user rather than having the user manually enter all the email addresses?

justsomehnguy• 3 years ago

It is.

spc476• 3 years ago

It's still useful. Some friends and I send group email (each person listed on the To: line) to manage our D&D game, but since it's only about eight recipients, it never gets out of hand and we're kept up to date with who can make the game and who can't.

What seemed to happen in the article is an email sent to a group-id (single email address that the server expands), not a list of a thousand-plus individual email addresses. To the client, a group email address is just an address---there's no indication that it will go to a few thousand people.

klyrs• 3 years ago

When my family is planning a get-together we reply-all, or things go bad very quickly.

spywaregorilla• 3 years ago

I can't think of the last time I used Reply over Reply All at work. If someone sends out a blast email that should not be replied all to; and doesn't put the group in BCC, that's on them.

iancmceachern• 3 years ago

I use reply all far more often than reply

themodelplumber• 3 years ago

https://www.facebook.com/usawtfm/photos/a.10150129458503606/...

Funny. Would love to see that on a (CLASSIFIED) or higher thread.

mensetmanusman• 3 years ago

Similar to the now infamous Bedlam incident at Microsoft: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/me...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm

KennyFromIT• 3 years ago

Unsub-squirrel

GauntletWizard• 3 years ago

Threadnoughts are a time-honored tradition. Congrats to all who joined in.

phendrenad2• 3 years ago

If only the email standard had a flag you could set in an email that tells the user's client "do not enable the reply-all button".

US Army officer reply-all E-mail chain causes pandemonium

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