I wonder at times if I’m the only person on this planet who gets annoyed by people who have no clue what Netiquette means. Yes I write that with a capital N on purpose… To answer my own statement, I actually do know a few close people who feel the same and I know for sure that two of them would have the same reaction as I have when the rules of Netiquette are ignored once again. I have discussed this topic with both at some point and I could tell from a certain reaction by one of them while we were still colleagues that he wasn’t happy at all when it occurred. So I guess it would be safe to say that I’m allowed to be annoyed by this issue…
Picture this: you would be living in a huge house with about thirty rooms and each room would have a tenant that would be connected in some way to other tenants in the same house. One day you expect an important letter to arrive, a letter with very personal information that you wish to keep to yourself. You would come home and look through the pile of post that has been delivered that day to find out that your letter isn’t there. Then one of the other tenants hands the letter over to you with a smile and walks off. You immediately notice that the letter has been opened and not only that, you also find out that this private information has been spread amongst the other tenants like a virus. What would your first reaction be?
Now how would you feel if you find out that some people, especially close people, can’t be trusted with delicate information? This morning I got two emails in from people that I quite explicitly told not to use my email address for anything else but correspondence between them and me. Shock and horror when I found out that I was made part of this extensive list of people that I never have met before and that I certainly do not wish to ever meet either. I asked both not to ever put me on mailing lists or include me in these so called funny emails and I even explained my reasons why. It doesn’t seem to make a difference, people are either ignorant or plain stupid.
I have tried to explain to some how to use ‘cc’ and ‘bcc’ in emails in the past and most of them could understand and would start using bcc instead of cc but do I really have to continue educating common sense for the rest of my digital life? I adjusted my ways already and now use several different email addresses for different people so I won’t get spam in on the ones that I either need for business use or private use: the ones that are really important to me. But why do I need to change my ways just because some still refuse to show some respect for other people’s privacy. It’s something that I just don’t get and yes, it pisses me off at times. Because of these people I have to use spam filters these days just to keep all the crap out of my mailboxes.
I think I will either delete some contacts from my address book or buy some nice paper, stamps, envelopes and refill my old fountain pen…
Snippet:
Beyond matters of basic courtesy and privacy, email syntax allows for different types of recipients. The primary recipient, defined by the To: line, can reasonably be expected to respond, but recipients of carbon copies cannot be, although they still might. Likewise, misuse of the CC/BCC functions in lieu of traditional mailing lists can result in serious technical issues. In late 2007, employees of the United States Department of Homeland Security used large CC lists in place of a tool like Majordomo to broadcast messages to several hundred users. Misuse of the “reply to all” caused the number of responses to that message to quickly expand to some 2 million messages, bringing down their mail server. In cases like this, rules of Netiquette have to do with efficient sharing of resources and ensuring that the associated technology continues to function rather than more basic etiquette.
