The anti-patterns of email conversations

This is funny:

Some patterns are very simple. For example, this is the “take it to private
email” pattern. This pattern can be thread-killed on sight; if you’re
feeling generous, read the last two messages in the thread.

bob    +-> Foo
fred     +->
bob        +->
fred         +->
bob            +->
fred             +->
bob                +->
fred                 +->
bob                    +->
fred                     +->

This is the “think before you post” pattern.

bob    +-> Foo
bob      +->

This is the “blindingly obvious answer” pattern. If you’re bored you can
read any one message to get the gist. Sometimes many of the replies will be
worth reading to get a broad overview of all possible responses to a given
obvious question. Most times not.

bob    +-> Foo?
fred     +->
alice    +->
george   +->
nancy    +->
steven   +->
nick     +->

Here’s a deceptively simple pattern, the “uninteresting message”. It might
be worth checking the post date to make sure that it’s not just the
beginning of one of the above patterns of course. And if you’re feeling
generous, you can read some small fraction of them.

bob    +-> Foo?

This might be a worthwhile thread. Notably because it’s short, has a
reasonable mix of participants, and seems to come to some kind of
conclusion.

bob    +-> Foo
fred     +->
alice    | +->
bob      |   +->
george   |     +->
bob      |       +->
nancy    +->
fred       +->

And here’s a transformation of that same thread featuring “too late for the
party syndrome” (or a “filibuster”)

bob    +-> Foo
fred     +->
alice    | +->
bill     | +->
bob      |   +->
george   |   | +->
bill     |   |   +->
bill     |   +->
nancy    +->
fred     | +->
bill     | | +->
bill     | +->
bill     +->

This is a perfect time to er, threadkill bill. Or if feeling generous, read
the second or third of his many replies to see what’s got him so worked up.

To see more sophisticated patterns, you need to categorise participants of
the mailing list. A few people almost always manage to turn even a useless
thread into something interesting, or have viewpoints that are good foils
for your own. Learn to recognise the names of these interesting posters
without thinking about it (I’ll name them in uppercase below). Similarly,
some people never contribute anything useful, and can be filed under
the label of k00k. If there are more k00ks than interesting posters it’s
probably time to leave the list. Most people won’t fit in either category.
Some people change category depending on the subject.

Here’s the same potentially worthwhile thread as before, but now the people
matter.

bob    +-> Foo
fred     +->
k00k     | +->
bob      |   +->
george   |     +->
bob      |       +->
NANCY    +->
fred       +->

Suddenly, three messages of the thread become worth reading, and the larger
k00k-tainted subthread’s likelyhood of being valuable drops substantially.