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[–] 120 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Emails don't need to work like text messages. Why are reactions even a thing for them?

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  • [–] 100 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    I like the idea - I don't want to send you an email back, here's a thumbs up to show I've received it.

    I hate the execution because I get an email telling me you reacted to my email.

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  • [–] 17 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    depends on the client; in outlook you just get an alert saying someone reacted.

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  • [–] 35 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Reactions like this work in closed ecosystems (Whatsapp / Facebook) where everyone is on the same client or via open standards that is baked into the spec of the protocol. E-Mail has neither of these, which is why it's so egregious that a whole email is being sent with 4-16 bytes of actual content itself.

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  • [–] 19 points 9 months ago

    Internet Standards.

    The things MS tried to extend-and-extinguish the Web when it was just barely born. Remember campaigns "best in any browser" ?

    We almost didn't have an open Internet.

    Fuck you specifically, MicroSoft

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I'm not sure what you even want then. If an email can't be delivered you should get a kickback notifications saying it can't be delivered. Though, that may depend on the email service.

    Ans if you're effectively looking for a read-receipt, I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to be notified of it. I don't want to have to manually check anything to see if there is new information to look at. An email may be overkill, but 🤷.

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago

    Not everyone wants read receipt notifications for everything. It is much easier if it is manual just like message reactions. So reaction is the best solution here. But as the user stated, its execution is not the best.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    If it isn't the first email you've ever exchanged, why can't you just plan for the fact that they got your email and if they drop the ball the fault is not yours?

    "I'm sending you this thing, if anything is wrong please let me know; otherwise I will assume all is agreed and we can move forward."

    No response required. Stay off my lawn, don't send me an email or a text or anything else that just says "ok". Maybe I'm showing my age...

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  • [–] 27 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    i like reactions, for the most part. its nice to do an acknowledgement without having to write out a whole reply so the other person knows i received it.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Back when I was a whee whippersnapper, we would click the reply button and type, "Ok", or "thanks", or "Ok, thanks", or "gotcha", or ":-)", or "+1", or "LOL", or "LMFAO", or ..... I mean, it was onerous, with those extra couple clickity clicks and tappity taps, but somehow we managed.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago*

    If you use the newer versions of Outlook it has some inane one-shot reply buttons you can click that is based on the content of the previous email and presumably some model built on you.

    My work computer uses Outlook, and it usually has options like these

    • Gotcha, thanks
    • Brill, thank you
    • I will do that, thanks

    At my old workplace though, one of our customers would always respond with a couple of letters. Could be something like

    Customer:
    Hi. Could you update thing on website?

    Us:
    Hello!
    Absolutely. We've rolled out the update, and you should be able to see it now.
    Hope all is well over there. :)

    Customer:
    T M

    Where T is short for "Thank you" and M is short for "Mary"

    Ah. They were fantastic. Frustrating but awesome people.

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  • [–] 75 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Outlook's own reaction handling is terrible. It adds the reaction icon to the email, but it doesn't mark it as unread or bring it to the top. The next day, I get an email with all the reactions for the day.

    "Available for a meeting at 9 tomorrow?" 👍

    Then the daily digest shows up at 9 and the meeting was never scheduled.

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I’m confused as to why it wasn’t scheduled? Were you the one who was scheduling it, or were you reaction-replying to an invite, anticipating that the reaction emoji would accept the invitation and put the meeting on your calendar?

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  • [–] 35 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    My work uses outlook and I still get a whole fuckin email saying "Dipshit has reacted 👍" and it's extremely irritating. I'll need to remember to turn off reactions on Monday.

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  • [–] 33 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Hey let’s all change what we do and how we do it to accommodate the monopoly Microsoft. Again.

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  • [–] 12 points 9 months ago

    Don't forget to add a string to your wifi ssid so Microsoft doesn't index it.

    And if you don't want Google to index it you need to use a different string, and it must be placed at the end.

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  • [–] 29 points 9 months ago

    This how I learn that reactions to e-mail are a thing now? I'm not sure what to even think.

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  • [–] 26 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    good thing i dont talk to anyone and i only get emails from companies, spam, and appointments. this would annoy the fuck outta me.

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  • [–] 21 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I got a thumbs-up reply to an email once and immediately looked up how to block it.

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    [–] 20 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Seamonkey does this by default, took me ages to work out what the fuck this "J" people kept leaving on emails was

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    [–] 17 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    The real stupid thing here is that a header has to be added to disable reactions. Why didn't Microsoft just use a header to enable them? I mean make it opt in instead of opt out. Then they can use that header in all their Outlook shit and everyone else can go on with their day not worrying about it. So stupid, but not sure what I expected from Microsoft.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    If you make a 'feature' opt-in, 3 people will use it, so the person who added it would have to work much harder to justify their paycheck. If you make everyone use your 'feature' by default, you can say 'look how many people use the feature I added,' while actually pointing at the number of people who didn't turn off the feature according to the spyware metrics.

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  • [–] 15 points 9 months ago
    [–] 14 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    I fucking guarantee you that Microsofts reasoning for this feature is to again force people to use their shit software.

    Oh, don't want those spam mails? Yeaaaahhh, you need to switch to outlook for that.

    Or, you know, just block domains that use Microsoft email

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    [–] 10 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Reactions are great. They allow for feedback without adding to the pile of email everyone already gets.

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  • [–] [S] 16 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    i agree reactions can be useful, but adding them to email the way Microsoft has is obnoxious for recipients using any client other than theirs. and, i think this is probably their intention: receiving an email reaction in a client that doesn't render it as a reaction feels wrong and MS probably hopes this will encourage some people to switch to using Outlook.

    the right way to add reactions to email would be to make it opt-in (and also not a vendor-specific header but instead something which aims to become a standard): clients should only allow reactions to messages which contain a header signaling that the sender supports receiving them.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    but email is used specifically for receipts, otherwise messaging would be used

    I realize that this is up to the user and that choice is great, so the issue comes down to implementation. and as a user... I find out far after the fact that somebody reacted to my email because outlook doesn't show me those notifications in a timely manner, nor am I going to look for them because I consider that a chat feature and Microsoft already sends me enough notification spam

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    Better to read and don't reply, or send a message and expect it was received IMO

    If it's worth replying, write a reply. I do not need a notification from anyone of a round asshole flashing different colors and gyrating because you casually agree in a congratulatory fashion.

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    [–] 10 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Coming from a neurodivergent: fuck Microsoft for doing this. It does not go along well with how email should work, makes it confusing for several reasons and shits over a lot of expectations.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago

    Thankfully we’ve not yet upgraded from Outlook 2016… saving this for if we ever do.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago

    Thankfully I haven't seen this, but if I did, the feature I'd be inclined to use is called "block sender".

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (1 child)
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    [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    Neil is great. Checkout his other work and follow him on mastodon

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