When Dan Hurley at ITS sent out an email to all students about the upcoming migration to gmail, one student replied.
The problem was that they replied to everyone on the list. That caused someone else to reply to that message, also sending it to everyone. Then someone else replied to that person, and so on. That’s why there are about 30-40 ridiculous messages in your inbox this morning.
But this was not because of the ‘reply all’ button, as some students suggested.
It happened because each of our student email address are registered as users in the gmail migration discussion group, so when anyone emailed ‘[email protected]’ (which was set as the reply-to address) the server sent an update out to everyone in the group. It’s usually used as a discussion tool, and likely not the correct setting for an announcement tool such as this.
Several students and alumni complained about the massive amount of messages, some even threatening ‘formal complaints’ if the messages didn’t stop, even though instructions on how to stop the messages were attached to each reply:
This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to the mailing list <[email protected]>.
To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[email protected]>
To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[email protected]>
To switch to the INDEX mode, E-mail to <[email protected]>
Send administrative queries to <[email protected]>
