{"id":28033,"date":"2007-02-13T10:00:03","date_gmt":"2007-02-13T10:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2007\/02\/13\/email-tip-dont-add-people-to-a-thread-without-saying-why\/"},"modified":"2007-02-13T10:00:03","modified_gmt":"2007-02-13T10:00:03","slug":"email-tip-dont-add-people-to-a-thread-without-saying-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20070213-03\/?p=28033","title":{"rendered":"Email tip: Don't add people to a thread without saying why"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you add me to an existing discussion, you have to say why. Do you have a specific question for me? Do you want my opinion on something? Are you just sharing a funny joke?\n Sometimes, I’ll get a piece of mail that goes like this:<\/p>\n

From<\/b>: Xxxxx
To<\/b>: Aaaaa; Bbbbb; Ccccc; Raymond
Adding Raymond. <\/p>\n

— Original Message —
… <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Gee, that’s very nice of you to add me, but you didn’t say why. Is this a FYI? Is there a question you want answered? Often, the discussion is just “Gosh, there’s this bug, person A proposes a theory, person B proposes a counter-theory, person C runs some tests and has some preliminary results, adding Raymond<\/b>.”\n It’s like “Adding Raymond” is a ritual phrase people sprinkle into a mail thread. They don’t know what’ll happen when they say it, they don’t even have any expectations, but it doesn’t hurt to say it, right? “When in doubt, add Raymond.”<\/p>\n

If you don’t explain why you added me to a thread, I’m just going to killfile it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you add me to an existing discussion, you have to say why. Do you have a specific question for me? Do you want my opinion on something? Are you just sharing a funny joke? Sometimes, I’ll get a piece of mail that goes like this: From: Xxxxx To: Aaaaa; Bbbbb; Ccccc; Raymond Adding Raymond. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[130,103],"class_list":["post-28033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-email","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

If you add me to an existing discussion, you have to say why. Do you have a specific question for me? Do you want my opinion on something? Are you just sharing a funny joke? Sometimes, I’ll get a piece of mail that goes like this: From: Xxxxx To: Aaaaa; Bbbbb; Ccccc; Raymond Adding Raymond. […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28033\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}