No Stupid Questions @lemmy.world SLVRDRGN @lemmy.world 7d ago

Is there an obvious technical reason why the major email services (Outlook, gmail, etc) can't seem to limit recipients from Replying-All?

Why not just have an easy button that you can click saying Do Not Allow Reply All?

I know that there are some ways you can limit reply-all availability, like in the URL linked here. But there's a note: If recipients open this email in other mail applications except Microsoft Outlook, such as opening on web page via web mailbox, they can reply all this email.

I'm semi-tech savvy but I'm no programmer. It feels like it should be easy to do, so either I'm totally wrong or email services are really missing out on a great thing they could do.

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I worked for a startup that got bought by Oracle. Five whole years without a reply-all storm, but the first week we had hundreds of people reply all and it was hilarious watching the admins try and fail to convince people to stop replying all.
- I've pointed out that this issue could arrise so many times to companies with the all staff email. Every time they push back on wanting to define limited senders, "we don't think it's an issue/no one would do that!" Until someone sends an inappropriate email to the whole company, then it's suddenly IT's fault.
- the admins should not be the ones convincing. Its the managers who have to wrangle behavior like that.
  
  Most of the people replying-all were managers
  
  ah but you see even managers have mangers. I mean if the behavior goes all the way to ceo then its just company culture at that point.
  
  its just company culture at that point
  
  Considering it was Oracle I'd go with this
- Wonder what the back end software is there. With Exchange reply-all storms are a thing of the past. I don’t have to convince anyone of anything to stop a reply all storm. Takes 2 minutes of setting up a transport rule. But the admin needs to be experienced enough to know that.
  
  It was Oracle so they probably have a terrible internal email server that will have reply-all storm protection in a year or two.
  
  I was working with the customer service software devs to migrate my team from Salesforce's Desk.com (because Oracle hates Salesforce) and they said it would take 18 months to make a dropdown that you could type in and select a macro for a ticket. Eventually they gave up.
  
  Is there any other way to describe Lotus?
  
  Enough said. You have my sympathy.
  
  I just talked to an oracle employee. They are using outlook/exchange/teams now and have moved on from Beehive.
- The correct response is to reply all when people start bitching. I can usually throw in an "unsubcribe" request in a separate email.

55 comments