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Just wondering what the standard for email/forum postings at your
job are. A coworker flamed another in a cc:all situation, and I wanted
an informal survey of what the standard is in handling such things.

Well being practically unemployed at the moment it is surprisingly lax what one can get away with here.

The last place I worked where this was applicable, CC:all as in whole company was highly unacceptable for anything but specific information that would benefit the whole company. CC:your department was basically anything goes though, and many hours of work were lost to niggling flamewars between pockets of developers.

Flamewars? Fun.

I work freelance

whatwhat wrote:I work freelance

So you reply all all the time, right?

malfred wrote:So you reply all all the time, right?

Is that supposed to mean: 'why are you posting then?'

In which case I don't know, just a joke. Sorry.

Cooks don't get to email other cooks while working....

In general, you want to avoid sending email to anyone who isn't going to be interested in the contents. So if there is a big change in HR and employee checks are being distributed differently, send it to everyone in the company. If the coffee machine breaks and needs repair, spend the time to figure out who's responsible for that and send them a email, don't send it to everyone in the company...particularly if your company has multiple sites. This sort of netiquette should be universal but I guess some people just don't get it or are too lazy to figure out who really needs certain bits of information.

As far as forum posting and blogging goes, you should avoid such activities at work if you are on company time. Some companies that have you there as contingency setups where you are not actually working all the time (phone centers when you don't have any incoming calls would be a good example) might allow you to surf the net or whatever when you are not doing anything so in those situations it would be ok. For most places though, you'd be better off saving the stuff like posting here for when you're at home. Of course with that being said, people (myself included) break those rules all the time and only occasionally get caught. But be aware that if you do get caught, you can be in trouble.

Users are discouraged from CC:all -- whenever someone does accidentally reply to something like an HR email to the entire company they get reminded pretty quickly.

There are no flame wars that I have seen, obviously I don't see all the emails that get sent but we have a pretty strong policy on harassment and abuse so I don't think it goes on.

Use of Internet
It depends where you work.

Quite a lot of staff need to use the internet to do research or moderate forums, and so on.

There is a list of banned sites which set off an alarm and an email to your manager if you look at them.

Some staff aren't allowed to use any internet due to security concerns.

I'ma contract technician... basically freelance, and do everything from home, but cc:all is sort of a factor... When our contractor sends an email to all of the technicians, a few people inevitably just hit reply and we all hear it.

One guy tried to organise a strike via this medium. I... don't think it worked out. I sure as hell went to work the next day, but that's being a contractor... what the hell is a day off?

And obviously I can look up whatever I want.

Arctik_Firangi wrote:I'ma contract technician... basically freelance, and do everything from home, but cc:all is sort of a factor... When our contractor sends an email to all of the technicians, a few people inevitably just hit reply and we all hear it.

One guy tried to organise a strike via this medium. I... don't think it worked out. I sure as hell went to work the next day, but that's being a contractor... what the hell is a day off?

And obviously I can look up whatever I want.

By some union contracts, I think that would be an illegal form of strike organization. Not
sure though.

This makes me glad I'm self-employed.

warpcrafter wrote:This makes me glad I'm self-employed.

Then you have to deal with your own crazy, though.

malfred wrote:

warpcrafter wrote:This makes me glad I'm self-employed.

Then you have to deal with your own crazy, though.

But crazy people don't know they're crazy, so I'm A-Okay!

I'm not sure I get what the question is...

CC:All is typically dumb but I'd need to know...is there an original e-mail they're responding to that was CC:All? Or did co-worker B send and e-mail that should have just been to co-worker A or a couple people and instead CC'd all (like management, etc).

This might help to understand why they were flamed/what the content of the flame was. it's one thing for someone to CC all because they are tring to cover their asses, another if they did it on accident, another if they're trying to get someone in trouble/bring management attention.

Anyway, without that info, all I can say is: CC:all is frowned upon but never results in anything other than a "hey don't do that" e-mail everywhere I've worked. Flaming people sometimes ends up with a trip to HR regardless of how justified it was.

CC:all: I would never consider it. No reason to participate or instigate flame wars, as I live 2,000 miles from my office so I have no real meaningful personal relationships with them.

Net in the office is strictly monitored and you are reported if you try to bring up a banned site. Unfortunately there is no list of banned sites, just some guidelines.

Net in my home is unmonitored.

Net on the ship I am on now is fairly unregulated. 4chan gets through, craigslist, ebay, games sites, and a ton of other vile gak.

The situation was an informative message that was flamed by a cc:all for being last minute information.

oooh, I see - so the CC:All *was* the flame. I took it to mean someone flamed someone else for CCing:all.

At my last job that would have been a meeting with management and maybe HR. At my current job I'd just end up talking to HR but that's just because the management structure is weird.

I've got a boss who does this kind of gak. He even includes clients in them when he's bitching out the guys working his project. The guy's nick name is Snap-On.