

Is anyone there? - chaosmachine
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/fashion/when-your-e-mail-goes-unanswered.html

======
momotomo
Avoiding giving a reply or simply being disorganised when it comes to
following up with responses isn't tech specific.

Penpals who take six months to reply, people who screen their calls, giving a
polite reply of "yes" when really you're never going to show up - it happens.

With the examples the author gave in a professional context - if you require a
reply on something, set the expectation rather than assume someone
communicates the same way as you.

If you're cold soliciting people over email for love or profit it should be
with the understanding that it doesn't necessary honour the other party to
reply.

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ForrestN
I for one am glad for the flexibility afforded by e-mail ambiguity. In a
situation in which one person wants to go out to lunch and the other doesn't,
is the better outcome that the first either confrontationally declines or
reluctantly accepts the request?

In the art world, the protocol for asking for a show at someone's gallery is
that you invite them over to your studio for a "studio visit." The purpose of
the visit, to see if they want to give you a show, is known to both parties,
but never explicitly stated. If the dealer doesn't want to give you a show,
then you just had a nice visit where they gave you some feedback about your
work. If they do want a show, obviously there's no problem. But the perils of
saying "Can I have a show?" and getting rejected are avoided by the
introduction of ambiguity. You don't know anything about why they've rejected
you (if it's you or them) and the relationship isn't strained by anything too
outright.

As annoying as it is sometimes, I think there are definitely cases in which
ignoring email can be a graceful alternative to difficult options.

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sorbus
> e-mails to travel with the speed of photosynthesis

Am I the only person who found this metaphor a bit jarring? It seems very much
like the author trying to make himself sound more cultured or intelligent,
unless he's trying to say something like "travel with no outward signs of
progress."

~~~
yolesaber
I believe it is pseudointellectual for "speed of light."

~~~
dools
"Photosynthesis is a chemical process that converts carbon dioxide into
organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from sunlight"[1]

If he were using this as a metaphor for the "speed of light" you'd think he'd
be referring to the emails going incredibly fast, but what he's actually
referring to is his "otherwise spectacular ... assistant" sometimes taking a
very long time to respond to emails (because he's busy looking at lulz).

In this case I believe that the author is using "speed of photosynthesis" as a
metaphor for being very slow, instead of using the more common simile "like
watching grass grow".

I'm not sure if "speed of photosynthesis" is really correct, though - I find
it hard to compare "rate of respiration" with "rate of growth" or "rate of
email response" but there you go.

He's certainly doesn't mean "speed of light".

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis>

~~~
w1ntermute
Give the author a break. He's a journalist, not a biologist. The last real
science class he took was probably in high school.

~~~
elliottkember
Right - all the more reason he shouldn't use photosynthesis in his analogies!

~~~
true_religion
It can't be any worse than people who misuse the hammer and anvil metaphor.

Many say "You are the anvil, and I am the hammer" to imply superiority of the
hammer bashing down on the poor anvil. However in reality, the hammer always
breaks and the anvil always maintains.

~~~
Luyt
Ah! I have another example like that. Sometimes people use the term 'quantum
leap' to describe some huge change. As it turns out, a quantum leap is a very
small change in the state of an electron, a very tiny event, nothing to write
home about.

~~~
daoudc
The point about a quantum leap is that it is discrete, rather than continuous,
so, for example, a "quantum leap in understanding" implies a progress in
understanding that cannot be broken down into a progression of small
increments of understanding.

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stephth
_In the end, short of asking for e-mail receipts, which many consider rude,
our only hope seems to lie in philosophical repositioning. I acquired some of
that entity when [P.M. Forni] told me that, online, “we communicate because we
can and not because we have something important to say.”

“We invest in the swapping of trivialities,” he said, “precious time that we
could use for serious reflection. I want to believe that when we stumble upon
black holes of silence on the net, that depends at least in part on someone
reacting against the tyranny of hyperconnection.

“There must be brave and smart souls who came to realize that thinking is more
important than communicating,” he continued. “I see them in my mind’s eye a
brave minority, sitting in silence, pondering and planning — the way it used
to be.”_

I like this guy's style.

Superbly written article by the way. Thanks for sharing @chaosmachine.

~~~
stephth
Downvoters, would you like to share your reasoning? I don't care about my hn
karma, I'm just really curious.

~~~
jayzee
I am guessing people downvoted you because you just included excerpts from the
article and said "superb" etc. Your comment did not add any value. Hence the
downvotes.

~~~
stephth
I highlighted an interesting part of a 2 page long article, pointing out it's
worth the read, for those who skipped the article or part of it. I believe it
does add value. I understand not voting up, but voting down without any
explanation isn't constructive.

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the quality of top hn comments in general, and
we have to thank 'moderators' for that.

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Cyph0n
Isn't that what emails are all about? They're meant to take time to reply to,
at least that's what I think. Unless the recipient of your email is sitting on
his/her PC 24/7, there is the chance that you'll have to wait for him/her to
reply, and that may take some time.

Don't want to wait at all? Use IM, or even social networking.

~~~
trustfundbaby
... or text message

------
necubi
This is largely a technical problem resulting from Email's unpredictability
and lack of any receipt verification mechanism. While this is true of other
non-real time communication mediums (like snail mail), that doesn't mean we
shouldn't try solving it.

Improved spam detection increases the likelihood that an email will actually
reach its intended recipient. In the 7 years I've been using gmail I've seen
exactly one false positive (although there is some bias here as I've long
since stopped checking my spam folder). But such technology has been slow to
filter out to the less technically inclined ISPs and mail providers.

As far as actual verification, there are several ways to achieve this now. A
popular technique is embedding a 1x1 pixel image with a unique id in its url.
Unfortunately this is frequently abused by spammers looking for verification
that an email address is good, so many email readers block images by default.

Any real solution is going to require some sort of trust mechanism or better
make the procedure opt-in. Still, anything would improve upon the current
situation where letters go silently into the void

~~~
ForrestN
Would you opt in? What if you don't have time to answer right now? I would
hate feeling like I had to either respond immediately or broadcast that I was
waiting. Part of the appeal of e-mail (or any correspondence) is that each
correspondent can proceed at their own pace. It's a feature, not a bug, at
least in many cases.

~~~
a3_nm
There is a difference between knowing that the message arrived in the
recipient's inbox, and knowing that the recipient has opened the message. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_receipt#E-mail> (DSN versus MDN).

MDNs are not a very good idea, but widespread use of DSNs would probably be
nice. There are quite a lot of cases where you just have to know if your
message arrived, but it is tedious (and slightly rude) to ask for
confirmation.

------
wccrawford
Email can be very painful if you use it incorrectly, yes.

I've been dating a girl I met recently, and the other day, I sent her an email
that laid my heart open. After I sent it, I realized she probably wouldn't
read it for hours, and then it might be even longer before she can craft a
reply!

I moped around for an hour and a half, when she sent a reply saying she was
sorry it took her that long to respond, and she knew what I must be going
through, waiting for a response. She addressed only that painful bit, and
responded to the rest when she had time later.

She's obviously a keeper. ;)

The moral of the story is that if you don't respect the properties of the
medium, you can do yourself a lot of damage.

Email is usually delivered instantly, but -not always-. And it's a medium that
is usually used for thoughtful replies, and not quick ones. If you want an
instant answer, you need real-time communication.

~~~
stonemetal
_Email is usually delivered instantly, but -not always-_

Isn't that the truth, The longest delivery time I have ever seen on an email
was around three weeks.

------
astrofinch
"I certainly felt ignored when a young editorial assistant at a magazine asked
me to send important information to her but never acknowledged receipt of
same. I waited 72 hours for her reply, and then sent the information again
with a note saying, “Just re-sending in case you didn’t receive.” When another
48 hours elapsed without a reply from her, I resent the information again,
this time appended, “I’m resending this because I have no way of knowing
whether or not you received it.”"

This guy isn't too well-versed with technology is he.

~~~
MetallicCloud
I've done this before. It's more a case if you don't know if your email has
mistakenly been put into the spam folder.

~~~
sonoffett
Me too. I consider myself technically well versed and I have setup mail
servers before. Whenever I send an important email with an attachment I always
include the phrase "Please reply on receipt" just to ensure that the other end
gets it. The mail server can be unreliable by ignoring the message if it
thinks its spam, especially so when you have attachments (every mail sever has
it's own file size/extension limitations). You would think that there would be
a notification if the message was ignored or not delivered but notifying by
default can be a bad idea since attackers can easily spoof (I'm ignoring SPF
TXT records) the sender's address and then use your mail sever to DDoS someone
else. Also, due to the sheer volume of SPAM you would tie up considerable
resources responding to legitimate senders.

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frankus
One problem with so many emails is that they're much faster and easier to
write than to thoughtfully respond to.

Something like "how much would a clone of ebay.com cost?" takes 5 seconds to
write by an eternity to answer in any thoughtful way (excluding true but glib
responses like "more than you can afford").

For message-delivery emails, a "Please let me know if you've received this"
goes a long way, as does following up with another medium.

For "quick question" emails, make sure they're as quick to answer as they are
to ask. You don't have to go all the way to a multiple-choice form, but aim
for mostly yes-or-no or which-of-the-above questions.

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inkaudio
well if you just wanted to know if someone read or opened your email, there
are services like didtheyreadit.com and toutapp.com and that will track this
info for you, sort of like a receipt. If you're looking for a quick
hack(limited results), you would embed an image in the email and track how
many times it is accessed. And most email marketing software track this
information for you. That solves the problem of "Is there anyone there", but
not the getting the person to reply problem.

~~~
thurn
How does this work? Now that most email clients block images and stuff in HTML
email, isn't it basically impossible to know if they read your email?

~~~
inkaudio
yeah if the image is blocked then yeah, it won't work, but if they did read it
more than likely they would click show images/html. But like I said it is a
quick hack it is limited. The other service, use a more sophisticated method
and it works for me, I know it email was opened. And if it was opened more
than once, I know more than likely it was read.

~~~
eru
I almost never view HTML emails, and if I do, I load pictures even more
rarely.

------
Hisoka
I do think the author has a valid point. Yes, sure you don't have to respond
immediately but taking too long to respond isn't very kind as well. You gotta
have some emotional intelligence. In fact, this sort of thing happens beyond
email.. it's also about phone calls that don't get returned, and failing to
"ping" friends regularly.

I know we live in a busy world, but you gotta have some insight into what
ticks other people.

Ignoring people for too long leads to bitterness as you wonders why he/she has
forgotten about you. It also leads to a negative view of the world. You start
to think it's dog eat dog.. It's true.. we don't respond right away unless
it's a sex text. We don't really care about others unless there's an orgasm in
stake, or at least an indirect path to an orgasm.

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clobber
From the article: "Consciously or unconsciously we think of our interlocutors
as disposable or replaceable."

Interesting, this must be how interviewers or HR types feel after they never
get back to you.

