Am I the only person who gets irritated by the flood of out of office auto reply messages after posting to a discussion list? I think these people do it out of ignorance. They don’t know that by setting their auto reply and remaining subscribed to the discussion list, they will be sending an auto reply to every single person who posts a message to that list. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t use the auto reply.
I’ve gone through the hassle of changing my discussion list settings to “no mail” or the equivalent before leaving for a trip, and then re-setting them upon my return. Well, I did it once and then decided it wasn’t worth it. Besides, I usually find a way to check my email while I’m gone, just in case something important comes through. In any case, it’s just common courtesy to change your discussion list settings before using the auto reply option, because otherwise you’re going to be another drop in the flood that will hit an unsuspecting user after they post to one of your discussion lists.
Am I asking for too much?
Go Anna! Excellent rant. I just posted to about 4 or 5 lists about a scholarship opportunity here in NY state and damned if moments later my box wasnt full of out of office replies and of course that evil mailer daemon character!
I own and moderate a list (ALA/SRRT/Feminist Task Force (feminist@mitvma.mit.edu) and I can attest to how horrible it is to recieve all those out of office replies–but at least the members of my list don’t have to contend with them. During ALA’s Annual Conference it was particularly onerous.
Theresa