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Posted by fanf2 5 days ago

Stop 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header (2024)(neilzone.co.uk)
63 points | 70 commentspage 2
infogulch 4 days ago|
Is it really that annoying?
johannes1234321 4 days ago||
My employer uses Outlook/Exchange and those reactions are a lot less annoying than short mails expressing the same thing on mailing lists and also is an alternative to notes not really demanding a proper response ending in the void. (Like a fun/life sharing post)
hk1337 4 days ago||
I don’t see any issues with it using outlook either but from what it sounds like when people do it for emails not managed by outlook, they’re getting a whole new email about it? If so, I could see how that would be annoying.
tiberious726 4 days ago|||
Yes
reaperducer 4 days ago||
Is it really that annoying?

It depends on the context.

If it's my mother acknowledging receipt of a recipe, then it's fine.

If it's a co-worker acknowledging receipt of a legal document, then it is both unprofessional, and annoying.

I mock my co-workers by replying with an actual e-mail message with the word "Thumb!" in it. They've stopped thumbing my e-mail messages.

maccard 4 days ago|||
> if it's a co-worker acknowledging receipt of a legal document, then it is both unprofessional, and annoying.

Disagree - a reaction is a perfect acknowledgement and a clear sign of “you don’t need to do anything here”. If they send an actual email it could be:

    Acknowledged, thanks.

    By the way can you change X to Y?
And it’s super easy to miss.
idiotsecant 4 days ago|||
You're that guy who everyone thinks is weird for doing the thing. In the real world language changes over time. We need not be dogmatic about it, you know what it means.
reaperducer 4 days ago|||
In the real world language changes over time.

This is what we used to say back in high school.

When you have actual "real world" experience, you learn that while language changes, there is professional language that you use in the workplace, and there is informal language that you use in a bar.

You don't use a single vocabulary for every interaction in every situation of your life. You alter your speech for the situation. You don't talk to the cop that just pulled you over, or the bank manager you're trying to get money from, or your mom the same way you talk to your friends watching a sportsball game.

reaperducer 4 days ago||||
You're that guy who everyone thinks is weird for doing the thing.

You mean like articulating complete sentences?

ziml77 4 days ago|||
"Annoying" is probably a more accurate word to describe what they're thinking. Coworkers have to remember to not use the reaction buttons with this one specific person who responds like an ass to them.
reaperducer 4 days ago||
If they annoy me, I can annoy them right back.

In the logic presented in this thread, how is an emoji any different from the word "Thumb?"

mouse_ 5 days ago||
> I don't want this.

It seems your colleagues do.

wiether 4 days ago||
I'm not sure they are talking about their colleagues:

> To me - as someone not in the Microsoft ecosystem

And the fact that they are managing their own Postfix seems pretty clear.

As someone in the MS ecosystem at work, I'm using this feature daily (after thinking that it was stupid in the early days)... but I make sure to only use it with coworkers or partners that I know are in the MS ecosystem.

I 100% understand someone being annoyed when they receive an email telling them that someone added an emoji to their email.

Sometimes during the weekend MS is sending me an email recap of the reactions I received during the week and it pisses me off.

The email reactions should be silent and that's their goal: a quiet ack.

wkat4242 4 days ago|||
The problem with this is embrace extend extinguish. The way Microsoft adds features to email that only work well in their ecosystem and annoy everyone else is a clear extend phase in progress
AlexandrB 4 days ago|||
Google is trying a similar strategy with AMP for email[1]. I think we're going to miss interoperable email once it's gone.

[1] https://developers.google.com/workspace/gmail/ampemail

wiether 4 days ago|||
Yeah that's why I didn't quite welcomed the feature at first: that's just MS adding their stuff and not following a standard.
bee_rider 4 days ago|||
Yeah. I think reactions emojis are just the gen-z version of the subject line:

RE: Here are the plans. Ack <eom>

In that sense they basically make sense and it should be unmysterious that people want them.

wiether 4 days ago|||
> I think reactions emojis are just the gen-z version

Every time someone tells that something I use and enjoy is "the gen-z version" of something, I'm getting worried: is it me trying to keep-up with the cool kids?

Having a few "gen-z" in my team, I quickly came to the conclusion that trying to profile them in a single group was silly: they all behave differently, like every human ever did.

ziml77 4 days ago||
As someone squarely in gen y. I've had the same feelings about me doing stuff that others are associating with gen z.

I think there may be two things at play here. One is that some people are just bad at adapting to social shifts and assume that everyone is the same way as them. The other is that people have gotten loose with usage of generation terms. So for some older people "gen z" = "person younger than me", while for some younger people "boomer" = "person older than me"

And both of those are problems with the speaker, so now I just ignore them and happily keep on doing the "gen z" things.

bee_rider 4 days ago|||
FWIW I mean just as a thing that gen-z popularized, I don’t think they think they own the idea (well, I hope they don’t, I’m not gen-z and I use them).

Anyway, the oldest gen-z is just about pushing 30 now, so they get to join us lame people with sore backs.

wiether 4 days ago|||
Thanks for your perspective, I must say that I agree with you
johannes1234321 4 days ago||||
That Mail is very different from reactions. A nice thing is that outlook can simply sum up the reactions and show them along the message in a non-intrusive way.

A Mail, even with just a subject takes a lot more space and leads somebody to answer to it which messes up the thread.

wiether 4 days ago|||
> A nice thing is that outlook can simply sum up the reactions and show them along the message in a non-intrusive way.

Yeah, that's why I came to like the feature. It's even visible at two places: in the thread list and on an individual email.

The only downside for now: the choice of emoji is too limited. I want my eggplant emoji! But given the history in Teams, where they started with a limited set of emojis, before adding all of them and finally allowing custom ones, I guess it's coming!

bee_rider 4 days ago|||
The emoji adds some new functionality for sure. That’s just the nature of iterative improvement, right?
wkat4242 4 days ago|||
They don't either. Microsoft wants it. They even do all this adoption crap basically advertising their own features "did you react to an email today? Did you @name tag a person today?"

If these features were actually compelling people would use them without having to be hoarded by an corporate drone "adoption manager".

zetanor 4 days ago|||
Thankfully, their wants can be overridden.
tliltocatl 4 days ago||
Colleagues simply don't understand the implications. The idea is good. The implementation is crap.
tomhow 4 days ago||
Previously:

Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40978073 - July 2024 (354 comments)

bakql 4 days ago|
This seems like a convoluted way of adding a new header, at least compared to the http servers I know. Why is that? Maybe postfix is not the appropriate place to make this change and that’s why there’s no option to just add a new header?
noja 4 days ago|
One line is convoluted?
mort96 4 days ago||
It's convoluted that it's a sed-style regex operating on textual headers instead of just ... an option to add a header