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


























                                - iii -







  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.























                                 - v -


                                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.





                                 - vi -


     The report was prepared with support from the National Science

Foundation and from The Rand Corporation using its own funds.






















































                                - vii -


                                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.





                                - viii -


     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.











                                 - ix -


     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.



































                                 - x -


     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.






















                                 - xi -


                                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






                                 - 1 -


                             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.





                                 - 2 -


     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.








                                 - 3 -


     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.














































                                 - 4 -


                     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.





                                 - 5 -


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






                                 - 6 -


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.






























                                 - 7 -


          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:










                                 - 8 -


     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






                                 - 9 -


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.





                                 - 10 -


     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






                                 - 11 -


         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.





                                 - 12 -


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.










                                 - 13 -


     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:









                                 - 14 -


     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:























                                 - 15 -


     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?









                                 - 16 -


     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.








































                                 - 17 -


        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.






                                 - 18 -


     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.








                                 - 19 -


     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






                                 - 20 -


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















                                 - 21 -


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.





                                 - 22 -


     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







                                 - 23 -


     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.





                                 - 24 -


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:






















                                 - 25 -


     (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.)





                                 - 26 -


     The following three guidelines are especially re