R-3283-NSF/RC
_T_O_W_A_R_D _A_N _E_T_H_I_C_S _A_N_D _E_T_I_Q_U_E_T_T_E _F_O_R
_E_L_E_C_T_R_O_N_I_C _M_A_I_L
_N_o_r_m_a_n _Z. _S_h_a_p_i_r_o, _R_o_b_e_r_t _H. _A_n_d_e_r_s_o_n
July 1985
Prepared for the National Science Foundation
Published by
The Rand Corporation
1700 Main Street
P.O. Box 2138
Santa Monica, CA 90406-2138
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The research described in this report was supported in part by the
National Science Foundation under Grant No. ISI-8412367 and in part by
The Rand Corporation in accordance with its program of public service.
The Rand Publications Series: The Report is the principal publication
documenting and transmitting Rand's major research findings and final
research results. The Rand Note reports other outputs of sponsored
research for general distribution. Publications of The Rand
Corporation do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the
sponsors of Rand research.
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PREFACE _______
Electronic mail and message systems are playing an increasing role
in the work we perform. The effects, and side effects, of this new
communication medium can be substantial. This report discusses a number
of issues related to the use of electronic mail and presents a set of
guidelines that should help lead to its effective use.
The report is not an introduction to electronic mail systems,
computers, or communication systems. It does not survey existing mail
systems or compare and contrast them. Rather, it is a discussion of
some important general attributes of such systems, and the effects of
those attributes on the quality and appropriateness of communication.
The authors discuss the "etiquette" of sending and receiving electronic
mail, drawing on personal observation of inappropriate or
counterproductive use of these systems. By presenting some initial
guidelines for their use, the authors hope to accelerate the process by
which social customs and behavior appropriate to electronic mail become
established, and thereby to accelerate the effective use of such
systems.
The intended audience is persons possessing some familiarity with
electronic mail systems, or considering adopting them for individual or
institutional use. The guidelines discussed here may ease their
transition to, and understanding of, this new and quite fundamentally
different communication medium. In addition, the authors hope that the
discussion will stimulate reflection by experienced users on their own
evolving rules, and thus promote an exchange of views on appropriate
electronic mail behavior.
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The report was prepared with support from the National Science
Foundation and from The Rand Corporation using its own funds.
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SUMMARY _______
Electronic mail and messaging systems, and electronic bulletin
boards, are an incredibly powerful and effective means of communication.
Because of this, they will grow and become one of the primary means of
communication for most of us.
These media are quite different from any other means of
communication. Some of the dimensions along which they differ are:
speed (of initiating contact, and of transmitting information once
contact is established); permanence of the message; cost of
distribution, to individuals and to groups; an organization's desire and
ability to filter, channel, record, and control messages; experience of
both an individual and of our culture in dealing with this new medium.
Perhaps the most important phenomenon in electronic mail systems is
the likelihood that the recipient will react negatively or
inappropriately in reading material that might well have been
misinterpreted. The misinterpretation results from several attributes
of the medium that allow casual and formal messages to look
superficially the same; that allow near-instantaneous, rather than
reasoned, response; that don't permit feedback during the delivery of a
message (as in personal conversation); and that require modification to
many old traditions of communication. A related phenomenon is
"flaming," in which emotions are expressed via electronic mail,
sometimes labeled as such, and sometimes not. There is a need, even a
greater willingness, to express emotion in electronic mail; if misused
(for example, in hastily responding to a misinterpreted message), it
impedes or even blocks communication.
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A second very important phenomenon is the noncontrollability of who
will see a message. Electronic messages seem quite evanescent, but in
fact they can live on for years on disk archives, to reappear later in a
variety of printed forms, some of which might be much more formal than
was ever intended or foreseen.
Old rules of behavior in communicating do not automatically apply
to this new medium. Some rules we have found useful for electronic mail
(not all of which are unique to this medium) include:
In sending messages
o Create single-subject messages whenever possible
o Assume that any message you send is permanent
o Have in mind a model of your intended audience
o Keep the list of recipients and Cc:s to a minimum
o Separate opinion from non-opinion, and clearly label each
o If you must express emotion in a message, clearly label it
o Other content labels are useful
o Think about the level of formality you put in a message
o Identify yourself and your affiliations clearly
o Be selective in broadcasts for information
o Do not insult or criticize third parties without giving them a
chance to respond.
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In receiving and responding to messages
o If you receive a message intended for another person, don't
just ignore it
o Avoid responding while emotional
o If a message generates emotions, look again
o Assume the honesty and competence of the sender
o Try to separate opinion from non-opinion while reading a
message, so you can respond appropriately
o Consider whom you should respond to
o Consider alternative media
o Avoid irrelevancies.
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In acting as a coordinator/leader of an interest group
o Perform relevant groupings
o Use uniform packaging, especially in the "Subject:" line
o Exercise reasonable editorship
o Timeliness is important.
Electronic mail is in its infancy, as is our understanding of it.
We have collected some guidelines that seem to point in proper
directions, and have personally used them in our own use of the medium.
Many of them appear to be common sense in a new guise, but they are
included because we've seen them violated in practice too often to
ignore.
Electronic mail and messaging systems have novel characteristics
that will lead toward their becoming a key, even dominant, communication
medium in the coming decades. Understanding the unique attributes of
this medium, and their effect on users, will help us all to avoid
unwanted side effects while obtaining the benefits from this new and
important means of communication.
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CONTENTS ________
PREFACE .......................................................... v
SUMMARY .......................................................... vii
Section
I. AN EXAMPLE ................................................. 1
II. WHAT THIS REPORT IS ABOUT .................................. 4
III. ELECTRONIC MAIL IS A FUNDAMENTALLY NEW MEDIUM .............. 7
Speed .................................................... 8
Permanence ............................................... 9
Cost of Distribution ..................................... 12
Organizations' Ability to Control the Medium ............. 13
IV. TOWARD AN ETHICS AND ETIQUETTE FOR ELECTRONIC MAIL ......... 17
Sending Messages ......................................... 18
Receiving and Responding to Messages ..................... 31
Acting as Coordinator/Leader of an Interest Group ........ 36
The Phenomenon of "Flaming" .............................. 38
V. IN CONCLUSION .............................................. 43
Appendix: NETWORK INTEREST GROUPS ............................... 44
GLOSSARY ......................................................... 50
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I. AN EXAMPLE ______________
Recently the following message[1] appeared in the electronic inbox
of one of the authors:
Received: From RAND-RELAY by RAND-UNIX at Fri May 27 20:07:55 1983
Date: Friday, 27 May 1983 20:05-PDT
To: ISD-ALL at RAND-UNIX
Subject: I'm puzzled!
From: hearn at RAND-RELAY
Does anyone know this guy, or the report to which he refers?
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Friday, 27 May 1983 14:15-PDT
From: trw-unix!csuf!dlm
Received: from rand-unix by rand-relay.ARPA ; 27 May 83 18:48:39 PDT (Fri)
To: trw-unix!randvax!hearn@Rand-Relay
Subject: Sun Microstation
I was given a copy of your trip report concerning SUN workstations
dated Feb 2, 1983. We are thinking of getting a couple of them
ourselves, and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind giving me
some updated impressions. Have you dealt with SUN any more
since then?
Thanks in advance,
David L. Marks
Johnson International
...!csuf!dav
------- End of Forwarded Message
____________
[1]Some of the messages in this report have had names and
affiliations altered to protect the privacy of the correspondents. All
are based on real messages that have been sent or received by the
authors. Any resemblance to actual people and places is probably the
result of sporadic editing.
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In many respects, this is a typical electronic message. It is one
of hundreds received each week by each author, and by thousands of other
electronic mail users throughout the country. For example, the
recipient's mail directory around that same time also contained:
260 5/18 tora Re: Danger! Psychologists at Work
261 5/19 francine telephone message <<Please call Mrs. Cutl
262 5/19 talbert Re: /r/anderson/ARPA/sim.modeling ...
263 5/22 norm Editor evaluations <<------- Forwarded Me
264 5/26 norm Darpa visit <<------- Forwarded Message D
265 5/26 To:drezner CPC matters <<(1) One of the reasons I wa
266 5/26 drezner Re: CPC matters <<'m sorry I have not don
267 5/27 To:drezner Latest Version of Draft CPC Report
268 5/27 hearn@RAND-RELAY I'm puzzled! <<Does anyone know this guy,
269 5/29 norm A disappointing issue of CACM
270 5/29 edhall Re: I'm puzzled! <<The letter is from a f
271 5/30 norm Moran's non-reply <<It is of interest to
272 5/31 talbert Re: schedule (revision of previous message
273 5/31 talbert Proposal DARPA Meeting <<Nancy, Please ar
274 5/31 nancy Re: Proposal DARPA Meeting <<I have reser
275 5/31 norm Archival Films <<When Bob Anderson left R
The message is typical because: It illustrates the ease with which
messages can be forwarded to third (or fourth, . . . ) parties; it shows
some confusion resulting from this forwarding, in that the recipient
doesn't know the sender or the context for the message; it contains
rather complex message routing paths, showing that the message has gone
through at least two separate electronic networks (ARPAnet and UUCP);
and it illustrates the broadcast power of the medium--to resolve the
question regarding the context of the message, the recipient (hearn)
broadcast it to all members of the Information Sciences Department at
The Rand Corporation, in an attempt to get an answer. Doing this was no
more trouble than sending it to one person.
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Our use of this example also illustrates some subtler aspects of
electronic mail. We edited the form of the forwarded message slightly
(but not the content) to fit within the format of this report. But the
reader has no way of knowing how we changed the message before passing
it on. There is a volatility to the medium, and yet a strange
permanence.
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II. WHAT THIS REPORT IS ABOUT ______________________________
The authors of this report have each used electronic mail[1] for
over 15 years. For this particular medium, that is a long time. In the
longer cultural history of us all, it is a very short time. The medium
is in its infancy, and is about to undergo an explosive expansion. Tens
of thousands of people--secretaries, managers, professionals, school
kids--will begin using electronic mail in the next decade, on their
personal computers at home and professional workstations at work.
We believe that electronic mail is a fundamentally new medium. It
is very different from telephone calls, interoffice memos, written
letters, and face-to-face conversations. It has different uses and a
different etiquette, borrowing in many cases from familiar ways of
communicating, but permuting the rules in the process.
As our title suggests, we address both the ethics and etiquette of
electronic communication. Ethics because certain behavior in dealing
with electronic mail can have useful or adverse effects on the society
as a whole and its members; etiquette because certain standard social
norms must be reinterpreted and extended to cover this quite novel
medium.
In this report, we explore how electronic mail is different, and
give guidelines we've evolved or observed regarding its appropriate use.
By doing this, we hope to accelerate a consensus about the development
____________
[1]In this report, we use the term _e_l_e_c_t_r_o_n_i_c _m_a_i_l to cover both
"traditional" electronic mail systems and electronic bulletin boards.
There may be characteristics unique to electronic bulletin boards that
are relevant to these guidelines, but we are not prepared to make that
distinction at this time.
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of appropriate rules of behavior for this medium. At the same time, we
intend to make what we hope are interesting observations in general
about the interactions between people and interactive electronic message
systems. As one result, we hope to ease new users' introduction to this
exciting medium, and make the process more pleasurable and useful to all
concerned.
One emphasis in this report concerns the emotions that arise in
both senders and recipients of electronic mail. Of course, emotions may
be positive (e.g., joy, pleasure, pride in work) or negative (e.g.,
anger, disappointment, confusion). We emphasize guidelines that avoid
generating negative emotions, because of their more harmful effects.
We, as well as others involved in the medium, have found that strong,
often negative emotions may arise in continued electronic mail
interactions--emotions that in retrospect may be inappropriate, and
whose transmission (or lack of transmission) via the medium lead to
further misunderstandings. A word, "flaming," has come into use to
represent expressions of emotion in (and often caused by) electronic
mail. We feel that this phenomenon is important, with many
ramifications, and discuss it at some length.
This report is not, however, a tutorial on electronic mail or
computers. We assume the reader is a regular user of interactive
computer systems, and has probably been exposed to at least one
electronic mail system. We do not define electronic mail, or survey
existing systems. For our purposes, an electronic mail system is simply
one that permits (at least) the creation, sending, receiving, filing,
printing, and deleting of electronic messages, where a message may be
one line of text or a multi-page document. Most systems also allow
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forwarding of messages received, scanning of the subject lines of a
series of received messages, and the creation of lists of addressees
that can act as mailing lists to simplify distribution of a message to a
standard group of recipients.
From our examples a more inexperienced reader can pick up many of
the key attributes of the medium. But unless you've used it, you will
probably not understand why we emphasize some seemingly minor points and
harp on rules of behavior that seem either obvious or strange. Until
you've received too much electronic junk mail, or been offended by a
message, or have inadvertently offended someone else (and wondered why),
you will miss part of our message.
Incidentally, all the examples we use are real. We have only
changed names and institutions at times when we could not contact the
author and recipient to receive permission to use their name or their
message.
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III. ELECTRONIC MAIL IS A FUNDAMENTALLY NEW MEDIUM ___________________________________________________
An electronic message often looks very ordinary. What is the
difference between receiving:
Date: Thursday, 19 May 1984 11:45-PDT
To: anderson at rand-unix
Subject: telephone message
From: francine at rand-unix
Please call Mrs. Cutler. 621-3208
francine
and having a pink telephone call slip put on your desk? Seemingly not
much. But then again, you can log in from home or a hotel room while on
a trip and get this message at 11 pm, and you can file it electronically
so that six months later you can retrieve it by the word "Cutler" in
case you mislay the phone number. Are these differences important? Not
always, but at times they can crucially change the way you organize your
work--which has some effect on the way you organize your life.
The most obvious "media" with which to compare electronic mail are
face-to-face conversation, telephone calls, notes, interoffice memos,
and regular mail. (We could add telegrams, telephone answering
machines, etc., but at the risk of making ponderous what we hope is a
brisk, readable analysis.)
Some of the key dimensions along which electronic mail (EM) should
be compared with these other media are:
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o Speed (to generate a message, to transmit one, to respond to
one)
o Permanence (of the resulting message, with respect to both the
sender and the recipient)
o Cost of distribution (to an individual, or a group)
o Organizations' desire and ability to filter, channel, record,
and control messages for the perceived good of the organization
o Experience (of an individual with the medium, and of the
culture in preparing an individual to use it)
o Accessibility
o Security and privacy
o Accountability and attributability.
We discuss some of these dimensions briefly below.
SPEED_____
Telephone calls are nearly instantaneous, _i_f _y_o_u _g_e_t _t_h_r_o_u_g_h. Note
that there are two aspects of speed that we're concerned with: (1) the
time to initiate a communication and (2) the immediacy of the feedback
obtained during or after the communication. Only about 30 percent of
calls reach the intended recipient on the first try. Sometimes
"telephone tag" takes days to reach someone, whereas that same person
might be selectively available--_a_t _h_i_s _o_r _h_e_r _c_o_n_v_e_n_i_e_n_c_e--to read an
electronic message before being in the right place at the right time to
make a telephone connection. Due to the delays often experienced in
establishing a telephone call, EM and telephone calls may be comparably
fast, with EM having a slight advantage in convenience, and telephone
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calls having the advantage if subtlety, humor, or privacy (non-
attributability) is required.
Face-to-face conversation is usually fastest and best, except when
you have to travel to do it. Then it's one to three orders of magnitude
slower. Again, time-to-initiate can dominate time-to-carry-out.
Interoffice memos usually take a day or so; regular mail takes
several days or a week. Given that an electronic message is usually
received by the recipient (if he or she is an active EM user) within 2
to 12 hours--assume an average of 6 hours--EM is from 4 to 28 times
faster.
When it is necessary to conduct a dialog, with repeated to-and-
from messages, both parties check for messages more frequently, and
thereby exchange many messages in hours, rather than weeks' or months'
duration for multiple written exchanges.
We are not saying that EM speed is good in itself, but it is clear
that it is almost always faster than other common alternatives. As we
pointed out, this is only one of many dimensions to consider, not an end
in itself.
PERMANENCE__________
The permanence (or conversely, the volatility) of messages varies
greatly according to the medium by which they're transmitted. This
characteristic of electronic messages is quite unlike any other medium.
U.S. mail and interoffice memos are nonvolatile. Messages sent
this way usually have a responsible author and are "part of the record."
(For example, they usually survive in various paper files and can be
subpoenaed--sometimes years or even decades later--if they are an
important part of some transaction.) Through this permanence, the
author remains accountable for what is stated in print.
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Face-to-face conversations, by contrast, are volatile. They leave
no trace. Telephone conversations are similar; although they can be
recorded, our society has established a set of legal protections against
recording a telephone call without the remote party's knowledge and
permission. Even if recorded, that recording often cannot be used as
legal evidence.
Electronic messages appear on the surface to be quite volatile.
You see them as flickering characters on a green phosphor, as evanescent
as fireflies. But consider the following possible attributes of an
electronic mail system:
o That message might reside indefinitely on a disk file, and can
therefore be recalled.
o The disk file may be backed up each evening onto tape, so that
a copy of the message is now buried in an archived tape in the
recipient's institution, or on an archived diskette on the
recipient's home computer.
o The message can be printed and filed, thereby instantly
achieving some of the attributes of a printed memo or letter.
o The message can be _a_l_t_e_r_e_d, then printed, thereby looking like
a permanent, authentic copy of the received message, but having
altered characteristics.
o The message can be forwarded to third parties (and then fourth,
and so on) at the push of a button, without the original
author's knowledge. It therefore achieves a form of permanence
through its replication in perhaps hundreds of computer systems
throughout the country. But nothing indicates whether those
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are authentic copies or not, even though they might well have
the original author's name attached.
o Printed copies of the message, no longer under the control of
the author, can be laser-printed or typeset. These may appear
much more official and substantial than was ever intended by
the author at the keyboard of his PC late one evening.
A theme pervades consideration of the permanence of an electronic
message. It is not clear to whom it belongs: the sender? receiver?
the organization owning the computer and paying for the service? As
multiple copies are made and filed, possibly on different machines, the
issue becomes even murkier. Again, we have no answer, but raise the
issue for consideration.
Given the strange permanence yet volatility of electronic messages,
Colonel David Russell (USA)--when Head of the Information Processing
Techniques Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and a
heavy user of electronic mail to communicate nationwide with various
project leaders and institutions--had a simple rule: Never say anything
in an electronic message that you wouldn't want appearing, and
attributed to you, in tomorrow morning's front-page headline in the _N_e_w
_Y_o_r_k _T_i_m_e_s.
One of the authors once violated this rule, and made some rather
derogatory comments in an electronic message about someone far away in
another organization. Through some path, that message found its way to
the subject, causing considerable embarrassment. What was said in haste
and in some anger at a particular moment did not disappear into the
ether as would a phone conversation; the potential permanence of the
remarks in electronic form was overlooked, providing a valuable lesson
at considerable cost.
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COST OF DISTRIBUTION____________________
It costs 22 cents to mail a first-class letter, as of this writing.
After the letter is produced (perhaps costing several dollars' worth of
secretarial time and overhead), the cost of sending 50 copies is about
50 times that of sending one. And it's not a very interactive medium;
replies dribble back from within several days to several months.
Interoffice memos can be mass-reproduced and distributed at small
cost, because interoffice distribution systems are already in place
within an organization. However, interactivity is again poor and
cumbersome.
A telephone call distributed to a group (a conference call) is
difficult beyond three or four participants. And if the group is
geographically distributed, the cost and time to initiate become
important factors.
Electronic mail, by comparison, allows communication with a wide,
geographically dispersed set of respondents. The communication can be
highly interactive, if recipients are expecting mail and frequently
check for new messages. If ordinary telephone lines are used, the cost
is not burdensome, and can be borne in part by the recipients, not the
sender. (For example, the message may be deposited in an information
system by the sender, but each recipient dials up and thereby incurs the
cost of the call to read the message.) At 1200 baud, a 400-character
message (seven or eight lines) can be transmitted or received in
3-seconds' time over a telephone line.
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Often, within modern organizations, the infrastructure for
electronic mail is already in place, using either central computers with
hundreds of terminals attached, leased phone lines, or satellite links,
so that the incremental cost of electronic mail is nearly zero.
Many heavy users of electronic mail within the United States,
primarily at research institutions, use the ARPAnet. The cost of this
important network is heavily subsidized by the U.S. Defense Department,
so that the true cost of using it is hidden from the user. In that
sense, artificial patterns of use are springing up. On the other hand,
an earlier form of communication network was also subsidized in its
formative stages by the Defense Department: the Interstate highway
system. (And earlier: railroads, telegraph, etc.) So the ARPAnet is
not so artificial; rather, it is exploratory. And as the medium begins
to mature--if that is not a contradiction for computer-based
technologies--self-supporting systems will arise that pay their own
costs, but have the same characteristics of ARPAnet pioneering systems.
Notable among these latter systems is the UUCP (Unix-to-Unix
Communication Protocol) system that links many computers throughout the
nation. It permits a loose, heterogeneous system through which
thousands of messages flow daily, with costs shared among all the
participants as a natural result of its heterogeneity.
ORGANIZATIONS' ABILITY TO CONTROL THE MEDIUM____________________________________________
Traditionally, organizations have channeled and filtered their
message flows along corporate hierarchical lines. For example:
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o You do not send a memo to your supervisor's boss without a copy
to your supervisor, and usually not without explicit prior
permission.
o Secretaries filter incoming mail, telephone calls, and
interoffice memos. For senior executives, ALL communications
(other than in meetings and conferences) pass through this
important filter.
These mechanisms have evolved to support the corporate structure,
and to conserve the time and attention of its executives. Comparable
mechanisms are not yet in place for electronic mail. Executives working
in the evening at personal computers at home can send messages without
"copying" their secretaries, resulting in those secretaries being "out
of the loop" on matters of which they're normally aware. A junior
executive can send a message to a senior executive, bypassing several
levels of control. Electronic mail tends to be more "democratic" (some
would say "anarchic"). Already, there is the electronic equivalent of
junk mail:
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Received: from brl-tgr.arpa by rand-unix.ARPA; Sun, 6 Jan 85
Received: from usenet by BRL-TGR.ARPA id a008108; 6 Jan 85 5:43 EST
From: Joan Smith <grant!ggs>
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: ancient history
Message-Id: <1078@grant.UUCP>
Date: 5 Jan 85 15:05:27 GMT
To: unix-wizards@BRL-TGR
For those of us who are TOPS-10 alumni, today is a tenth anniversary.
What were the rest of you doing on January 5, 1975?
--
Joan Smith AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Phone: (201) 582-1256
Internet: ggs@grant.uucp
UUCP: grant!ggs ( {allegra|ihnp4}!grant!ggs )
Of course, one person's junk mail is another's important message.
The above message was sent to a group called "unix-wizards," at least
some of whom may have been interested in the message's contents. But
for many, it might well be the equivalent of junk mail. Also in this
category are notices about cheese buying clubs, upcoming ski trips, and
so forth that clog the mailboxes of people who aren't interested in
those topics.
Do we need unlisted electronic mailboxes? Will there be
authorization lists (electronic files, of course) showing who can send a
message to whom within the organization? Should message systems
automatically send an information copy to the author's secretary, unless
explicitly overridden by the sender? Will "back channels" of
information flow, made much easier and in some cases more anonymous by
electronic mail, erode the traditional corporate structure? Is this
good or bad? For whom?
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We don't have answers to all these questions, but as use of
electronic mail grows within traditional organizations, their answers
will evolve along with the medium itself. The medium is capable of
supporting filtering, gateways, permission lists, and other constraints
if they are necessary. And yet the explosion of use of, and interest
in, electronic mail is certainly tied to some extent to its freedom, its
interactive broadcast capabilities, and its democratic nature. All we
can say now is that it is a fundamentally new medium with significantly
new characteristics, that cannot be treated with the old rules alone.
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IV. TOWARD AN ETHICS AND ETIQUETTE FOR ELECTRONIC MAIL _______________________________________________________
People have had about 50,000 years' experience in the use of speech
and gestures, 5,000 years' experience in writing, and about 100 years'
use of the telephone. This cultural history should not be taken
lightly; the entire fabric of our society has been shaped in significant
part by cultural accommodations to our means of communicating.
As individuals of the species, living within a particular culture,
we have a particular messaging history: From birth, we learn speaking
roles and rules from conversations. By age 4 or 5, some basic telephone
habits are learned (such as: "Say something when you pick up the
receiver after it rings--don't just stand there silently"). By age 7,
we are writing nontrivial messages. The average adult has accumulated
hundreds--perhaps thousands--of rules of behavior regarding telephone
and written ethics and etiquette, from practical experiences with these
tools since those early years.
We have tried to indicate that electronic mail is different. Part
of what we mean by that is that the old telephone or letter-writing
rules of behavior do not automatically transfer over to this medium and
work. You don't write business letters as electronic messages;
messages are usually more informal. And yet electronic messages are not
printed telephone conversations either. What we find is that the medium
is different enough, and the average user's experience has been short
enough, that problems arise. Meanings are misunderstood. Tempers flare
and cause ill-conceived responses to be written. Many recipients' time
is wasted reading content-free or irrelevant messages.
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What we need is a new set of rules: how to be a constructive,
courteous sender and receiver of electronic messages. We certainly do
not have this set of rules, all tied up in a tidy package. We do,
however, feel it is important to hasten the cultural evolution toward
this goal. What follows, then, is a discussion of some of the important
guidelines we've observed from experience. They are discussed in
separate sections for Sending, Receiving, Responding, and Leading an
Electronic Interest Group.
There is some overlap in these categories, but they provide
structure to this complex topic. Within these categories, we highlight
the issues related to the emotional impact of electronic messages, since
the immediacy of the medium, and yet the remoteness of the participants,
leads to some unique problems in this regard.
SENDING MESSAGES________________
Create single-subject messages whenever possible________________________________________________
You may have three separate things to tell your intended recipient.
We argue that three short separate messages are better than one. Some
reasons:
o Each of the messages can be filed, retrieved, and forwarded
separately by the recipient (and sender), depending on the
content.
o Subject lines in each message can be descriptive of the
contents of each message, allowing more meaningful scanning of
header listings of the messages in one's inbox.
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o Replies can be tailored to specific messages, so that the
reply's subject line accurately reflects the content that's
being replied to. Also, others can be copied on the responses
that apply to them, without being burdened by the parts that do
not.
Assume that any message you send is permanent_____________________________________________
The message will be sitting in someone's private files, or in a
tape archive. Through the miracle of computer networking, it can reside
on computers elsewhere in the world that you don't know about, forwarded
there without your knowledge or consent. It can appear in any form from
dot-matrix-printed to typeset at any time in the future. If this has a
chilling effect on the content of your informal, chatty messages, that's
probably appropriate. At the very least, make a quick assessment of the
risks and benefits of what you type, and act accordingly.
Have in mind a model of your intended audience______________________________________________
When your message says, "Would you please review the draft document
appended to this message, and give me your comments by noon tomorrow?"
does that mean only people listed in the "To:" field, and not the "Cc:"
recipients? Have you used more computer jargon in your message (lulled
into techno-talk by using an electronic medium) than is appropriate to
your audience?
Part of the model of your audience are some pertinent details such
as their correct electronic mailing address. It is all too easy to send
a message to "bob" because that's the one you know best, and ignore the
fact that there are eight other "bob"s in the organization. In one
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company known to the authors, the login name "bob" belongs to the first
Bob that joined the company; others are "bobe", "bobw", etc. It is
impolite to send electronic mail to unintended recipients, if only
because they then feel obligated to take action, like notifying the
sender or attempting to forward the message to the right party.
Do you know the recipient well enough, and have other channels of
communication with him or her, so that attempts at electronic humor or
irony will not be misinterpreted? These attempts usually don't work,
and appear quite differently in the cold light of a new day, a new
computer, or a new context.
Keep the list of recipients and Cc:s to a minimum_________________________________________________
In one sense, it is too easy to send electronic mail. Electronic
mailboxes fill up with peripheral material that needs to be scanned and
continuously culled. If one of your recipients decides that someone
else needs to see a message, it can be forwarded at that time.
Consider an extreme but possible case: A message contains a
distribution list of 20 people. Let's say the message asks for comments
on a position paper. Each of the recipients responds, copying all the
original recipients. (Note that in many message systems, copying of all
recipients is the normal practice, which must be explicitly overridden
to prevent it from happening!) Each of those answers is in turn
commented on by each original recipient, copying all original
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recipients. This process generates 421 messages _i_n _e_v_e_r_y _p_e_r_s_o_n'_s
_i_n_b_o_x, with the total system containing 16,421 messages.[1] If each
message takes an average of 100 characters, this process has used up 1.6
megabytes of disk storage. This is in addition, of course, to the
social cost of all the human time and effort that has gone into this
electronic correspondence.
Since answers to messages often copy all original recipients, try
to avoid the combinatorial explosion by not proliferating recipients.
Shoot with a rifle, not a shotgun.
There is a special case that is worthy of note: Most EM systems
allow a number of recipients to be accessed by a single name, which
becomes a kind of "distribution list." In this manner, communicating
with a group is even easier: Typing "project_alpha" gets you 20 names,
and with a higher likelihood that they're all spelled right. The bad
news is that one can forget that typing, or responding to, or copying
this simple name can proliferate messages unconscionably.
A related phenomenon is the "special interest group," a named group
of recipients having a common interest, and exchanging messages on that
topic, across computers and across the country. Within these groups, a
common means of reducing message proliferation is for a message author
to ask, in the message itself, that replies be forwarded directly to him
or her; the original author will summarize in a later message the
replies received for the benefit of the group. This is a good idea that
should become a common protocol, invoked by a commonly understood
keyword or phrase in a message.
____________
[1]We assume in this example that copies of messages are made by
the computer system, not just pointers to a "master copy" of a message.
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The following guidelines in sending electronic mail relate to
issues with special emotional attributes. In other words, they can lead
to bad feelings or misunderstanding quicker than normal, and much
quicker than one might expect.
Separate opinion from non-opinion, and clearly label each_________________________________________________________
Your recipient, and especially unintended recipients further down
the forwarding path, might not know you as well as your friend in the
adjoining office, and may not know about the subject matter of the
message well enough to distinguish opinion from fact.
If you must express emotion in a message, clearly label it__________________________________________________________
As mentioned above, sarcasm, humor, and irony often do not work in
a message. Someone who knows your acerbic wit less well might not "get
it."
This doesn't mean every message must be dry and humorless.
Especially on the ARPAnet, a whole tradition of "flaming" has developed,
in which emotions are vented, but labeled as such. For example:
(Message inbox:431)
Received: by rand-unix.ARPA; Fri, 15 Feb 85 15:22:07 pst
From: John Schwartz <schwartz@rand-unix>
Date: 15 Feb 85 15:22:02 PST (Fri)
To: randvax!anderson
Subject: Re: Danger! Psychologists at Work
Just read the article in the Computer Journal about Frederickson's
studies on man-machine interfaces. What cr*p!! They're measuring
what can be measured, not what's important. I'm so tired of
reading this kind of tripe that I'm cancelling my subscription.
(Flame, flame). Perhaps a rational message about this will follow
after I calm down!
John Schwartz
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The tradition of labeling emotions has developed for two good
reasons: (1) People feel strongly about many subjects, and want to
express the strength of their feelings, and (2) there have been many
examples of misinterpreted messages, in which emotions were
misinterpreted or confused with the other content of the message.
Labeling attempts at humor, anger, or sarcasm as such allows those
feelings to be transmitted, but with less misinterpretation. Again, it
helps to remember that there could well be readers of your message at a
different place and time for whom even your labeled emotions might be
inappropriate. Flaming is discussed further, below, in the subsection,
"The Phenomenon of Flaming."
Other content labels are useful_______________________________
In addition to labeling an emotional outburst as "flame," there are
three other common labeling conventions of which we are aware[2]:
o A "smiley face" symbol, typed as ":->" or ":-)" (turn the page
a quarter-turn clockwise for maximum effect), indicates the
author intends something as a joke, or less frequently as an
ironic smile.
o The keyword "spoiler" is used in the subject field of messages
that reveal the plots of movies or the like.
o There is a convention of using public encryption for messages
(including spoilers or obscene jokes) that might be offensive
to casual readers. The keyword "rot13" is used in the subject
field to indicate the use of a standard encryption algorithm.
____________
[2]Our thanks to Jeff Rothenberg for reminding us of these
conventions.
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All of these labels reduce shock, surprise, or disappointment in the
reader that are normally avoided by other social conventions in face-
to-face interactive conversations. They thus contribute to an expansion
of normal etiquette into this newer medium.
Think about the level of formality you put in a message_______________________________________________________
Consider the following message:
(Message inbox:291)
Received: by rand-unix.ARPA; Fri, 21 Dec 84 11:40:18 pst
From: Bob Anderson <anderson@rand-unix>
Date: 21 Dec 84 11:40:12 PST (Fri)
To: randvax!anderson, randvax!gillogly, randvax!norm
Subject: meeting ..
we need to setup a meeting bet. jim you and i -- can you arange?
i'm free next wed. thks.
Much about this message conveys its informality: lack of careful
capitalization in the subject field, informal grammar, lack of specific
form, content that appears to have been typed hurriedly (although this
lack of rigor might well be deliberate).
Here's another example of a message:
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(Message inbox:292)
Received: by rand-unix.ARPA; Fri, 21 Dec 84 11:48:09 pst
From: Bob Anderson <anderson@rand-unix>
Date: 21 Dec 84 11:48:02 PST (Fri)
To: randvax!fowles, randvax!martin, randvax!wilson, randvax!adamson
Subject: MEETING ON FY86 PLANNING, 2PM 12/28/84, CONFERENCE ROOM 1
There will be a meeting of the FY86 planning task force in
Conference Room 1 on December 28, 1984 at 2pm. The Agenda
for the meeting is:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Topic Presenter Time
-----------------------------------------------------------
Strategic Business Plan John Fowles 30 min.
Budget Forecast for FY86 Sue Martin 15 "
New Product Announcements Peter Wilson 20 "
Action Items for 1st Qtr FY86 Jane Adamson 25 "
-----------------------------------------------------------
The formality of this message can been seen from the care that was
put into it. It wasn't just dashed off some midnight before logging
off, but rather was probably entered, then edited, using a word
processing program.
Why do we care about the level of formality of a message? Simply
because the content of the second message should be given more attention
and care when received than the first. Words were chosen in the second,
and therefore could be expected to be chosen carefully to convey the
meaning intended. In the first, informal, message, the words might well
have been dashed off, and should be taken quite lightly. You should not
try to read deep meaning into a hasty note. (In our other written
correspondence, we have other clues: Scribbled notes on the back of an
envelope are treated more informally than typed letters. However, on
your terminal, all electronic messages in one sense look the same, so
greater attention must be paid to what clues there are to their level of
informality.)
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The following three guidelines are especially re