Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The internet's newest annoying thing

This is topic The internet's newest annoying thing - business card attachments in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-27-2005, 12:46 AM:

Am I the only one who is annoyed when people send emails with their business card attached to every freakin' email? Can't these people put that info in an automatic footer within the body of the email? It makes scrolling through emails looking for a REAL attachment a major pain in the butt. [Mad]

Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 07-27-2005, 12:51 AM:

Gee sorry Brad, I don’t know a whole lot about Email, I just type and send and that it, if there is however a correct procedure then I’m welcome, but a demonstration of how it should look will help, over to you Brad…

Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 07-27-2005, 01:42 AM:

Indeed. Useless attachments are stupid.
If you're going to include your contact information or something in EVERY email, make use of the SIGNATURE feature. It's there for a reason...

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 07-27-2005, 08:28 AM:

The VCF attachements are the ones I guess you are most annoyed with...and I plead guilty to having it on mine. I started using it when I received emails with them...it make things pretty much "point-n-click" to have someones "contact information". No copy and paste...just "click" and the contact info is in the contact manager you have designated.

I guess it really depends on how many "new" contacts one comes across versus the repeat people as to the annoyance of the attachment.

So does it annoy most people...or just primarily Brad...in which case...thanks for the tip [Wink]

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-27-2005, 09:26 AM:

Don't forget that people who do this almost invariably send mail in HTML, too. [Mad]

And don't get me started on the increasingly popular practice of quoting the _entire_ text of _every_ previous message _below_ the response. Yuck. If quoting a previous message at all, the quote should be trimmed to the minimal amount necessary. Quoting an entire message is rude, and adding the response above the quote is even more annoying, since it forces the reader to read bottom-up to figure out the flow of the conversation.

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 07-27-2005, 10:39 AM:

It's not so simple, Scott.
Quoting the entire message below your own is the halfway point
between not quoting the message at all and interspersing your own remarks between the quoted lines.

It can be quite helpful if, say, you have added another party to the cc list and want to give them the opportunity to see the context; or if you think the recipient probably has context, but aren't sure, then they can scroll down and read it "just in case," but you don't force them to have to reread the context just to see what you have to say.

So I certainly think it has a place, and that a religous "No top-posting!" attitude isn't the way to go. It's not a good default, but it is a reasonable compromise a lot of the time.

--jhawk

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 07-27-2005, 11:04 AM:

I wasn't intending to say that "top posting" is _never_ appropriate, just that it usually isn't. It is one thing to choose the format of a message because it contributes to the meaning of the message itself; it is quite another to just be too lazy to trim quoted material.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 07-27-2005, 02:38 PM:

I have the VCard thingy turned on by default (along with my signature) for about three years now, but usually uncheck it if it's going to someone who knows me. The VCards don't bother me at all. Attachments have icons in my mail browser, so I can easily see which attachment is interesting and which isn't. No scrolling to find the right one for me.

Top posting replies doesn't bother me either. I'd hate to have to scroll to the bottom to read the latest reply. If I'm interspersing notes in a reply to answer a series of questions or whatever, I bold them, or make them a different color or something then say at the top "Comments in BOLD" or whatever.

Never had any complaints.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-27-2005, 02:49 PM:

I don't mind one way or another if someone leaves the entire conversation (of a dozen replies) in a response email. I do however detest people who email questions in, I reply, then they email back without the last email being quotes.

Really, I have better things to do than open my email and see an email that reads something like this:

quote:
ok that sounds great, but what happens if that does slip?

WHAAAAAT???? Damn you! Now I have to go sorting my email box by your name to figure out what in the hell you are referencing because some people do get more than 1 email a day. [Mad]

More and moreso lately, I'm considering just ceasing to reply to those kinds of emails.

Oh yeah, and Vcard people SUCK! Use the damn signature feature.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 07-27-2005, 03:06 PM:

quote: Brad Miller
I do however detest people who email questions in, I reply, then they email back without the last email being quotes.

Part of the problem there is that Outlook (including OE), which is probably the most widely used email client, doesn't make it easy to include quoted text that is clearly distinguished from your response. One of the reasons I like Eudora is because of its 'paste as quotation' feature, which allows you to cut text from a received message and paste it, indented and with a margin, into a reply.

If someone replies without quoting or citing the original within a day or two I don't mind because I can usually remember what it's about. But if they do that several days or even weeks later, then agreed - they suck. In that scenario, if you're not going to quote, you should at least write something like: 'In your message of 8 July you suggested a timescale for installing the projector. That sounds great, but what happens if it slips?'

My pet email hate is people who use 'teaser' subject lines or don't change the subject line of a message when replying to accurately reflect what's in the text. So you might get one which says: 'Re: unusual perforations in 1908 negative' when in fact (s)he's changed the subject and is asking you something completely different. When you get 50-60 emails a day (not including spam), a subject heading which accurately describes the contents is essential to be able to prioritise.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-27-2005, 05:29 PM:

I hate business card attachments. I'm suspicious of any kind of attachment in general. So folks who I don't know that include a business card attachment in an e-mail are liable to have their note fall victim to my delete key out of reflex.

HTML based e-mail poses plenty of risks. I always proof my e-mail via my ISP's home page (and do the same for our company's e-mail as well). Most notes are auto-deleted. If they appear like spam, have odd characters in the subject line or just appear odd in any way they're killed. I won't view notes in HTML. And when I respond, any response is converted to plain text. So if someone spent a bunch of time composing their pretty HTML based note to me, congrats, I didn't see the content.

It pisses me off that e-mail has become such a stupid pain to use. Now that I think about it, that Russian spammer who got beat to death probably got what he deserved. These anonymous hacker and spammer turds out there think it's funny as hell to ruin much of the Internet experience for most others. Because of that, I'll relish in the few instances where one of those shitheads gets punished in real "analog" form.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 07-27-2005, 05:41 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
Part of the problem there is that Outlook (including OE), which is probably the most widely used email client, doesn't make it easy to include quoted text that is clearly distinguished from your response.

Yes it does. Here is a picture from my Microsoft e-mail:

As you can see, new text is black, old text is blue, and older text is green (and it keeps going to red, mauve, striped, polka-dotted, etc. You can even change the colors to what you want). This is determined simply by the ">>" characters before each line. I do prefer the new stuff to be on top because I don't want to have to scroll all the way down to the bottom to read it. The exception is when someone is replying to several different points in the e-mail, like after every sentence. When it is like that, top-down works best.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 08-01-2005, 06:18 PM:

My boss has now started sending VCF files in all of his e-mails! Arrrrgg!!! They take up 73k of space, too!

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-01-2005, 06:51 PM:

Add his email to the blacklist so it gets dumped before it ever has a chance to hit your email box.

Sooner or later someone is going to come up with a program to look in the attachment for a VCF file and DELETE the whole damn email automatically. I'll be the first in line.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 08-01-2005, 08:20 PM:

quote: Scott Norwood
Don't forget that people who do this almost invariably send mail in HTML, too.

And don't get me started on the increasingly popular practice of quoting the _entire_ text of _every_ previous message _below_ the response. Yuck.

I disagree with you on both counts, Scott. IMO, there's nothing wrong (and there's lots positive) about HTML email. If the email is long, studies have shown that it's easier to read type that is not monospaced - that's why books don't use monospaced fonts. (OK, I realize you can set the app to convert a plain text message to a variable spaced font, but technically, a text email is read using a monospaced font like Courier.) Secondly, sometimes being able to color code or boldface type is important. I would send emails to programmers to show them what was wrong with certain pages and boldface or color code the errors. They would always screw-up the fixes. I finally discovered that they were reading their mail in text mode, not HTML.

And for the reasons posted above, I have no problem (and I frequently prefer) people to quote the original message. What I hate is when you get an email with the same text quoted 14 times.