Dear Outlook And Gmail Developers…

Dear Outlook, Gmail, and developers of all email systems. I have a feature request.

Actually, it’s a feature removal request. I think it will improve the productivity of all email users, and how they value your tools.

Please remove the “Reply All,” feature. I’m just about to join a meeting of more than 300 people. But many of them have have lost the meeting link. Rather than addressing their requests to the meeting organizer, they are using “Reply All…..” My inbox has exploded with requests.

This is perhaps the most egregious example I’ve encountered. But I experience this everyday with smaller groups. 90% of the “Reply All’s,” I receive are meaningless to me. Often, they are simply single word responses, inflicted on the group: “Great, Fantastic, Terrible, See you then, Agreed,……..” Or worse, they simply have a few emoji’s

All of these acknowledgements are relatively meaningless. Just some individual’s, well intended acknowledgement. But they are inflicted on everyone on the distribution list.

What if we forced users to be more thoughtful about their use of email? What if rather than making it easy for them to flood the world with “Reply All,” they had to think, “Who really needs to see this response?”

So, it would be really helpful to me, and possibly millions of other users, if you eliminated Reply All. It would make my Inbox much more manageable and me more productive.