Re: mea máxima culpa

[Carl Peterson]

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 3:50 PM, Evan Driscoll <address@hidden> wrote:

On 9/12/2013 2:03 PM, Carl Peterson wrote:
> It also discourages the delightful idiots who insist on replying all
> to a mass mailing (when the original sender didn't have the decency or
> know-how to stick the recipient names in the bcc).

Personally I never really got that argument. I almost always reply all
to discussions like that. Why? The following two assumptions:

1) If the original sender CC'd someone, it's because they thought that
   person would be interested in the contents.

2) If someone is interested in an email, there's a good chance they'll
   be interested in follow-up emails.

I definitely pay attention to who I keep on the CC list and will remove
people if I have reason to believe the followup is a lot less relevant
for them, but that's my general rule of thumb. Maybe it's just because I
don't get enough emails, but I get *way* more annoyed when it seems like
I've been dropped from a mail thread that was relevant to me then I do
when I get extra emails that are *not* relevant.

Personally, I don't see the reason for BCC besides a CYA move.

There are multiple reasons for using BCC.

1) If the email is a "report" of some kind, but is not intended for discussion, then the BCC allows the people who are interested in the report to receive the report, and makes it so that queries go back to the sender, who can choose what to do with that query.

2) If a person is "one of those" who sends stuff to everyone in their mailing list  (shudders), then it means that if the person didn't want to receive it in the first place, they don't have to deal with the responses that result.

3) It respects the privacy of individuals. It is, unfortunately, not uncommon for people who are on one mailing list to use the recipient addresses to seed the recipient list of their own mailing list.

4) As a follow-up to #3 (and tangentially related to your use case), there may be times when a person needs to know but their identity cannot, for various reasons, be revealed to others. This is similar to what David posted (I just saw his reply come through) about donor reports. Donors can't be anonymous if everyone sees that they're donating.

Many who send out frequent (legitimate) mass emails are having to utilize third-party list services, as more and more mail servers and clients are filtering the bulk recipient lists out as spam. Thus, the need for BCC is lessening (to being principally a preventative measure), but the need still exists.