One of our members sent a pointer to this article on TechCrunch. Apparently, the Nielsen Media Research’s management had taken action to remove the Reply to All button from the interface of all its 35,000 employees’ email clients, as part of a drive to eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency.
It is fascinating to read the comments to the post. As my own experience confirms, suggestions like this tend to stir heated emotions. And indeed, on one hand, it is easy to identify with the views that it would be better to educate people to act sensibly; on the other, with thousands of users, we know that will never suffice. My own take on this is that the more aggravating RTAs – the ones that are a clear result of thoughtlessness – may be solved even if you don’t remove the button, but simply move it on the toolbar away from REPLY. Even such a tiny change might eliminate some of the reflexive use of RTA when REPLY would suffice.
What do you think?
