5 Reasons The “Wikipedia Secret Mailing List” Isn’t A Big Dealhttp://www.ikiw.org

By David Cain on December 12, 2007 -- 4:39pm

I’m always interested in what people are thinking about when they say things like:

“if you have a wiki, email blasts should be a thing of the past, right?”

I’ve felt this and I’ve said something like it in the past, but I’m more convinced of the concept’s deep wrongheadedness by the day.

Users continue to use email to manage their business (vs. going to any number of well-designed web pages or web applications) not because they’re stupid or incapable or afraid of learning a new way.

Indeed, they continue to use email because:

a. it comes to them - they don’t have to know where to go to get it, and don’t have to bother to do so.

and:

b. once received, it waits patiently for them to look at it - it doesn’t scroll off to the “yesterday’s news” archive, it doesn’t grow an increasing thread of comments to keep up with, it doesn’t get revised by competing factions a la Wiki, and it doesn’t require a special login to see each piece of mail.

and:

c. it lives on the local machine, if the user is being smart about it. The user doesn’t have to run down to Starbucks, doesn’t have to borrow an Ethernet cable, doesn’t have to accept your corporation’s certificate and configure Wi-Fi settings, doesn’t have to plug in the $*#(*#@$(*@!! modem, just to read what (s)he read on the screen yesterday. It’s in the mailbox. It’s just IN there, and dear user can chill out about it.

The many well-intentioned attempts to design a way out of email and onto the web seem to fail to recognize that users like email not because they’re stupid, but instead because they’re focused on their own needs, vs. drivers imagined by information architects and UX people.

In looking at UX, I have the mindset that the user can’t make a “stupid mistake”. The user only does either what he or she wants to try, or what the site seems to be telling the user to do. Typically, the site is designed to do something other than what the user wants to do, or poorly informs (explicitly or implicitly) the user of how to get a task accomplished. If we’re serving the USER’s intents, the user can’t screw it up - it’s the site that’s got it wrong, right?

It doesn’t matter how nice the wiki, doesn’t matter how efficient the IA; you can’t design your way into turning push into pull, and you can’t design the users intents into something they’re just not.

If wiki was so much better than email blasts, email blasts would just stop of their own accord. It’s survival of the most-appropriate-for-users-needs, nothing less.

By ScottAbel on December 13, 2007 -- 6:54am

David:

Those are some interesting points. My view is not wiki versus email, it’s organizations paying their employees to inefficiently manage their time. There’s no reason any boss should allow their employees to use misuse tools that waste time. Email is a giant time sucker—just like formatting content—and seldom does the amount of effort employees put into creating and managing email actually benefit an organization.

One common example is using email to schedule meetings. Many folks waste a tremendous amount of time (and therefore corporate resources) sending invitations to meetings via email. These well intentioned communications are sent to multiple people and ask one simple question: Can you attend a meeting at 1pm ET on such and such a date? They seldom however get the answer to the question they asked.

Let’s assume the email meeting request was sent to 10 people in geographically dispersed areas; four are inside the company firewall, six are outside the firewall (and several of the six are partners, one is a vendor, and one a consultant).

Three of the targets open the email and respond quickly. Of those three, one confirms the meeting time and date is fine. One asks “What is this meeting about?” but does not answer whether they can attend or not. And the remaining person responds saying she’ll be at a conference that day and can’t make it. She doesn’t offer alternative dates and times.

Four of the targets don’t respond as the email was caught in SPAM filter or missed due to some other reason—likely lost in the sheer volume of email in their in boxes.

Two more targets read the email, but forget to respond.

The last person responds and carbon copies the other nine targets and asks “Do we really need to have this meeting?”, which triggers an email discussion between three of the targets. Each of these responses are carbon copied to all of the ten invited to the meeting. A heated discussion over issues related to past meetings ensues. No meeting is scheduled.

The meeting coordinator uses email to try and get the meeting scheduled and the targets to stop arguing about issues from the past. Meanwhile, three of the targets stop reading email about the meeting and begin ignoring messages from the meeting team. They start their own email thread about the meeting and start wasting even more time.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that this type of effort takes place at organizations around the globe because of email. Hundreds of individual emails can easily be created by a group of ten folks trying to set up and agree up a meeting time. This approach is wasteful and does not take into account efficiency, something every organization should be striving to improve. It also breeds frustration and creates situations in which people avoid email, take sides, and generally spend time performing non-productive tasks.

My point is that email sucks at helping us accomplish many tasks efficiently. Sure, I can teach you to fix your radiator via email, but it wouldn’t be the right tool for the job.

And, what is the right tool for scheduling meetings, you ask. Try Meeting Wizard.

By Stewart Mader on December 13, 2007 -- 5:02pm

David,
Point well taken, but keep in mind my comment was specifically referring to “email blasts” not email itself. I think it’s a matter of choosing the right tool for the job, and in my opinion email isn’t the best way to get a message out to a lot of people - they often ignore it, consider it spam, or delete it without even reading it.

Depending on the situation, a blog or wiki is a much better choice. A blog is better since the people reading it have opted in, and that means they’re more likely to be actively interested in what you’re publishing. A wiki is better when you need input from a group of people and want them all to work together on the most up to date information, with the least amount of mechanical process (i.e. downloading attachments, opening them, worrying about which version you have or whether you have the right software to open it, etc.)

Email is easy and ubiquitous, and has also become one of the most inefficient, time wasting forms of communication because of poor uses of it. These poor uses arise when people just use it because it’s there, and don’t think about whether it’s the best tool for the job.

Cheers,
Stewart