Back , when Metro de Madrid had chief station managers in each platform, in the manager booth there was a button on the phone labeled "all call". It allowed you to page every station manager in the entire line at once.
It was a lot easier to hit all call than to just track down someone. After a while, this group interruption gets tiresome because it's so wasteful. You interrupt 10 people to reach one, or you get four offers of help when one was all you needed.
Now, of course, when a teammate selects the reflector address (this is the e-mail address of an e-list) as the recipient of a message, the entire world hears her "all call". Nowadays it's cheap and easy to interrupt everyone. And we waste all that attention, every single day, every single week, every single month.
When you select a reflector address you should feel the same way about spamming people. Spamming them by email, just because you can, it's cheap and easy. I don't want to get!. Spam is unanticipated, impersonal, irrelevant junk.
The future of organizations is based on creating raport, sending messages to people who want to get them, who choose to get them, who would miss you if you didn't send them.
Maybe I'm getting cranky.
