Slashdot Mirror
Gmail Adds 5 Second Send Rule
theatrecade was one of a few folks to note that Google Labs has added the
five-second rule to email. Once upon a time this rule only applied to delicious foodstuffs dropped on the floor, but at long last you can change your mind on that email to your boss or ex. We shall see peace in our lifetimes.
I understand the rationale on this but the hold time needs to be much longer...like 12 hours for it to be effective.
Or it should be combined with the beer goggles add-on.
Either way, this won't stop my ex-girlfriend from drunk-calling me...
We don't live in Shouldland.
My idea for preventing the submission of blank e-mails or e-mails lacking that attachment you were going to remember:
put the recipient address field below the message field
would that be helpful for anyone besides me? y/n
Esoteric reference.
a/s/l?
I want you to tweak my nipples with a grapefruit spoon.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Oops, wrong channel.
Dammit. When is slashdot going to implement the five second rule?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I use Thunderbird, which has an "are you sure you want to send?" confirmation by default. Since I use the ctrl-return hot key to send, I usually just blast through this message so at one stage, I switched it off.
However, I found that in the half second between pressing ctrl-return and return to confirm, my brain was actually doing some checking to make sure I should send that message.
I sent a reply to a whole message board asking for more information about a job - not a disaster, but not what I had intended. I realised almost as soon as I had hit the button, but I'd switched off the confirmation by this point. I rapidly switched it back on. Since then, I've noticed quite a few occasions on which I've hit ctrl-return and then realised I should tweak my message in some way before I send it.
In conclusion: 5 seconds may not seem like a lot, but it could make all the difference.
I used to work for a company where The Managing Director frequently used to send (usually offensive) emails to the wrong people by accident. His usual error was to insult someone behind their back and accidentally include them in the cc field!
Whenever this happened, he used to come hurtling down the stairs and rip out the Ethernet cable from the mail server in an attempt to stop the mail going out!
At first I thought he was trying to outrun the electron charge as it traversed through the network cabling, but it turns out that at some point in the past, someone had reconfigured the mail server to delay all mail by 30 seconds, just so he had time to rip out the Ethernet cable in an emergency!
No, but it's certainly enough time to stop the mail and add another 'FUCK YOU' to the end.
There are other reasons why you'd want to recall a message sent to your boss.
Say, you forgot to attach the required document. Or you realized you made a typo in dollar amount. Or you forgot to copy someone important on the message (and because of CYA or whatever, your boss needs to see that you cc:ed the person).
At least once a month I send an email I wish I could recall, because I would have liked to have made a small change... and instead I end up sending a followup email, which is just unwieldy and annoying.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It happens more often than you think. I've had plenty of times when I've clicked send and almost instantaneously realized I had a mistake in the email. This will save me from having to immediately reply to my own email to make that correction, thus looking like a fool (I have plenty of other ways to make myself look like a fool, thank you very much).
Now, if they could just add a feature that held any emails sent after 2am for 12 hours, aka the "sober up first" rule, thus preventing me from waking up after a bender thinking, "oh crap, did I really send that email confessing my true feelings to that girl I had a crush on in high school but hadn't talked to in 15 years?", life would be just great.
Some people can barely react in that time
Yeah, but most of the people who can't react in <5 seconds are on the roadways in Florida, not behind a computer screen ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Whenever this happened, he used to come hurtling down the stairs and rip out the Ethernet cable from the mail server in an attempt to stop the mail going out!
At first I thought he was trying to outrun the electron charge as it traversed through the network cabling, but it turns out that at some point in the past, someone had reconfigured the mail server to delay all mail by 30 seconds, just so he had time to rip out the Ethernet cable in an emergency!
It occurs to me that if you laid the Ethernet cable for the mail server across those stairs you could allow him to accomplish his goal of preventing the mail from going out while providing endless amounts of humor for the rest of the office ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You mean Mail Goggles?
The other day I felt so generous that I sent an email telling someone that I would pay 2,000, 000, million billion US dollars to anyone who would help me get my dead father's money out of Nigeria.
A second later I thought "you know I could just keep the money myself", but it was too late. Keep looking, you might be the lucky one getting my email.
Another solution is to always sit back and read through the entire message (and recipient list) before hitting send.
I mean that quite literally. Remove hands from keyboard, sit back and just read.
That habit has saved me a lot of trouble in the past.
did I really send that email confessing my true feelings to that girl I had a crush on in high school but hadn't talked to in 15 years?"
Yes, you did. Now cut it out before I get a restraining order ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I thought Slashdot already had an article on this feature. It's called Mail Goggles. It won't stop you from sending the email, but it may slow you down.
Unfortunately, I have a Masters Degree in Drunken Calculus, so that feature won't help me :(
That reminds me of a company I used to work for. A woman there, usually very kind and agreeable, was fed up with one of her contacts feeding her a lot of excuses why he wasn't able to make a deadline for the 3rd time. She thought she forwarded a nice e-mail to her manager containing some very choice words expressing her opinion that matter.
Oh how quickly that send button was smashed without carefully verifying who was in the To field, only to discover that instead of forward she had pressed reply to all. When the deed was done and the mailserver had delivered her incredibly inflammatory experiment in vocabulary she stood at my desk nearly in tears asking me if I could stop her mail from reaching its destination.
Alas, it had reached its destination, and there was nothing to do but push the "retract message" button in Outlook, which is about as useful as the mail that usually precedes it.
Surprisingly though, that person never missed a deadline again.
A lot. I've had this happen. It happens no /. to.
Like the times when one typos a two letter word.
Your ad here.
There is no such condition as "decision anxiety".
You must choose either Cognitive dissonance OR Multipotentiality
That's not a terrible idea. There have been a number of times that I've sent an email with the body of text saying "here's the report you asked for" and forgot to attach it. which made me feel like an idiot.
You can avoid that from happening ever again. And it's very simple:
Before you write any sentence mentioning an attachment, attach the file first.
Same goes for important mail. When writing a job application, finish the email first, then add the recipient address last.
I lost my sig.
Rule number one of electronic communication: never send any while angry. Always calm down first.
How many times did you come running into work in your boxers with a major hangover at 7:59am screaming UNPLUG THE MAIL SERVER! UNPLUG THE MAIL SERVER!?
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
Unfortunately, I have a Masters Degree in Drunken Calculus, so that feature won't help me :(
Yes. As long as you know not to mix drinking and deriving.
<ducks>
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
it is cool to start a thought in the subject field, and finish it in the body field.
Good grief how I hate that. It can completely change the meaning of a post.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
We're going in so many tangents we may as well be a derivative.