Timeline for When to answer and when not to answer a brief e-mail from a busy academic?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 12, 2017 at 2:10 | answer | added | cag51♦ | timeline score: 2 | |
| Dec 6, 2014 at 20:29 | comment | added | mbork | BTW, I highly recommend a search-based (as opposed to folder-based) email client. I've been using such a tool for a few months now and I like it a lot. (If I really want to see emails grouped by folder, I can do it - but normally I just enter a search query, involving content, date, flags etc., and my client runs the search across folders and even across my three accounts.) | |
| Dec 6, 2014 at 20:27 | comment | added | mbork | ...or do not value their own time. And then, they have no right to complain that someone else wastes their time, too. | |
| Dec 6, 2014 at 20:26 | comment | added | mbork | OTOH, while I have to agree that I was wrong: neither everybody uses threads, nor are they always the best choice, my main point seems to hold. I receive more than 60 emails every day; if I optimize my workflow so that I save one second per email, and if I assume that I will somehow have to change my configuration once every year, and even if I spend as much as two hours just configuring my email, I gain net four hours. (And these assumptions are rather conservative.) IOW: if people for whom email is an important part of their workflow do not optimize it, they are either irrational or... | |
| Dec 6, 2014 at 20:20 | comment | added | mbork |
@O.R.Mapper: well, mixing /Sent/ and /Inbox/ emails is one of the advantages of using threaded view for me;-). What's more, in my email client toggling the threading behavior is the question of hitting one key (P in this case).
|
|
| Dec 6, 2014 at 20:16 | comment | added | O. R. Mapper | @mbork: I don't. I find that confusing. I need to see my e-mails sorted by date, and possibly filtered, not jumbled in seemingly arbitrary ways because some e-mail client thinks it knows which messages belong together. Occasionally, I have to use a web-based version of Outlook that does that by default. It just doesn't work there, and it gets incredibly difficult to find anything - and it is particularly bad because it mixes up e-mails from different folders, such as Inbox and Sent. (But with that said, changing the subject line seems fine to me.) | |
| Dec 4, 2014 at 21:41 | vote | accept | Constantin | ||
| Dec 4, 2014 at 19:12 | comment | added | mbork | @Erbureth: fair enough. OTOH, does there anyone not use an email client displaying threads? And, harsh as it may sound, but if someone uses a tool which causes significant waste of time (and does not want to invest time to learn better tools), s/he should be ok with other people wasting their time, too. | |
| Dec 4, 2014 at 19:06 | comment | added | Erbureth | @mbork changing the subject line is a bad idea, it should always be descriptive so the recipient always knows which problem it refers to. Only adding the tag to the subject line is OK | |
| Dec 4, 2014 at 19:03 | comment | added | mbork | What about sending an email with subject like "Thank you very much! [EOM]". The first time one encounters this acronym, there is a one-time overhead of checking what that means; then the persons says to him/herself: "Ah, that's clever!", starts using it and the easy way to save people's time spreads further;-). | |
| Dec 4, 2014 at 15:23 | comment | added | Trylks | I always thank in advance for several reasons but mainly this one. | |
| Dec 4, 2014 at 14:36 | answer | added | David Z | timeline score: 6 | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 23:24 | comment | added | Jeromy Anglim | See also: Is it appropriate to reply every time to a professor's “thank you” email? | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 22:42 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackAcademia/status/540274936938766336 | ||
| Dec 3, 2014 at 21:41 | comment | added | ff524 | Related: Etiquette on sending a thank you e-mail to respondents who gave me helpful information | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 21:40 | history | edited | ff524 |
edited tags
|
|
| Dec 3, 2014 at 20:37 | history | edited | jakebeal |
edited tags
|
|
| Dec 3, 2014 at 20:37 | answer | added | jakebeal | timeline score: 46 | |
| Dec 3, 2014 at 20:31 | review | First posts | |||
| Dec 3, 2014 at 20:36 | |||||
| Dec 3, 2014 at 20:26 | history | asked | Constantin | CC BY-SA 3.0 |