Compulsive email acknowledgement
5-Jul-2006There are people, particularly in the business world, who can not let any email go unacknowledged.
You can recognise them when you’re down to the sub-sentence part of your email conversation. They send you an email saying “I’d be interested in seeing that whenever it’s ready.” You send back an email that says “I’ll probably have a draft ready for you this afternoon,” and declare the conversation deceased.
Then they send you back an “OK.”
Is it protocol for me to send back a “Roger?”
What happens when two of these people send each other an email? Is the Internet in danger?
I have pondered an solution for this issue for some time to address this issue, but until now I didn’t realise the whole Internet was depending on me to rescue it from danger.
SMTP needs yet another extension to handle these people – it’s kind of like a response to a Read Receipt Request, except it is unsolicited.
The compulsive replier would press a button, which would send a specially formed email which referenced the original email and meant “Yes, I acknowledge what you said.”
Your email client could just add a green icon next to the original email green or something, rather than bothering you with a whole new email.
I’d be interested in seeing that whenever it’s ready.
uhuh.
I value and acknowledge what you are both saying.
ACK/FIN
TIME WAIT