Most of us spend a great deal of time in their e-mail inbox. And unfortunately, sometimes the inbox gets clogged. Most often, it’s spam. That’s easily dealt with by adjusting your spam filters. Sometimes, you’re on too many mailing lists - unsubscribe, or filter them into mail folders so you only have to read them occasionally.
But quite often, some of your friends or family forget that not everybody’s inbox has only two or three pieces of mail. You’ll get the newest “funny” joke, or a chain mail that “must be forwarded to avert bad luck”, the occasional six megabytes of baby pictures and other annoyances you’d rather not deal with.
However, it’s a delicate situation. They are friends, you like to hear from them. Simply marking them as spam won’t do, and you want to receive most e-mail from them. Telling them that this particular piece of mail was unwanted isn’t easy, either. It’s hard to write a polite e-mail when you’re already running out of time.
Thankfully, Merlin Mann at 43 Folders is helping out here. He wrote a very polite letter explaining why certain forms of communication are not appreciated by everybody. All you need to do in your reply is link to Thanks. No. - or simply make the text a form letter in your e-mail application.
Tags: Email, ThanksNo, Spam, SocialEngineering
Now the tricky bit, how do I send this link to my friends without them thinking I’m sending it TO them!
Heh - it comes with a simple form letter for that purpose:
Polite enough, I’d think - and better than what I come up with when I’m in a rush. that’s certain