<story><title>Knuth versus Email (1999)</title><url>http://cs.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hengheng</author><text>So he&amp;#x27;s self-centered enough that he expects everybody to read through all of this essay. Interesting.</text></item><item><author>jrcii</author><text>I was reminded of RMS&amp;#x27;s autoreply:&lt;p&gt;I am not on vacation, but I am at the end of a long time delay. I am
located somewhere on Earth, but as far as responding to email is concerned, I appear to be well outside the solar system.&lt;p&gt;After your message arrives at gnu.org, I will collect it in my next batch of incoming mail, some time within the following 24 hours. I will spend much of the following day reading that batch of mail and will come across your message at some point. If I write a response immediately, it will go out in the next outgoing batch--typically around 24 hours after I collected your message, but occasionally sooner or later than that. Please expect a minimum delay of between 24 and 48 hours in receiving a response to your mail to me.&lt;p&gt;If your message is hard to understand or responding takes real work,
the response could take longer.&lt;p&gt;So please wait 48 hours after sending a message before you resend it,
remind me about it, or ask if I have received it. If it has been less
than 48 hours, the absence of a response from me only means you have not given me time to answer.&lt;p&gt;If you are having a conversation with me, please keep in mind that each message you receive from me is a response to the mail you sent 24 to 48 hours earlier, and when writing it, I probably had not yet downloaded your later mail.&lt;p&gt;If you are in big hurry to speak with me, and one day&amp;#x27;s delay would be a serious problem, you can ask my FSF assistant to phone me. Send mail to &amp;lt;rms-assist@fsf.org&amp;gt; saying what you would like to talk with me about, and giving your telephone number. You can also call the Free Software Foundation office at 617-542-5942 (weekday Boston business hours) and ask them to phone me on your behalf. If it&amp;#x27;s really important, try both!&lt;p&gt;An intermediate measure is to email me your phone number and ask me
to phone you.&lt;p&gt;But if there isn&amp;#x27;t enough hurry to warrant phoning me, please don&amp;#x27;t bother the FSF people. The mail you already sent me will reach me before any mail they could send me now on your behalf. I will respond as soon as I can.&lt;p&gt;To contact the Free Software Foundation, use one of the addresses in
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fsf.org&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;contact&amp;#x2F;email&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fsf.org&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;contact&amp;#x2F;email&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;If you do not wish to receive this message ever again, please send a message to rms-autoreply-control@gnu.org with the subject &amp;quot;OFF&amp;quot;.
Otherwise, you might receive a reply like this one up to once a month.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jegoodwin3</author><text>Actually, back in the 80s, people normally wrote email of about that length, and since gaming was uncommon, had the leisure to read well-written prose from their peers.&lt;p&gt;Sometime around 2000, busy people started complaining about this practice, and old timers started to hold their tongues.  I knew the era was over when my Millennial co-worker one cube away asked me to not interrupt him and IM him instead, since he had to take off his earphones.  About the same time, my boss complained about how long my (senior engineer, explaining matters related to the immanent demise of the company...) emails were -- frankly managers were busy and 1-2 sentence ought to explain about this O-ring problem.&lt;p&gt;Your projection of self-centeredness on the part of your elders is unbecoming and ill-informed.  You are merely young.&lt;p&gt;rms is just old school.</text></comment>
<story><title>Knuth versus Email (1999)</title><url>http://cs.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hengheng</author><text>So he&amp;#x27;s self-centered enough that he expects everybody to read through all of this essay. Interesting.</text></item><item><author>jrcii</author><text>I was reminded of RMS&amp;#x27;s autoreply:&lt;p&gt;I am not on vacation, but I am at the end of a long time delay. I am
located somewhere on Earth, but as far as responding to email is concerned, I appear to be well outside the solar system.&lt;p&gt;After your message arrives at gnu.org, I will collect it in my next batch of incoming mail, some time within the following 24 hours. I will spend much of the following day reading that batch of mail and will come across your message at some point. If I write a response immediately, it will go out in the next outgoing batch--typically around 24 hours after I collected your message, but occasionally sooner or later than that. Please expect a minimum delay of between 24 and 48 hours in receiving a response to your mail to me.&lt;p&gt;If your message is hard to understand or responding takes real work,
the response could take longer.&lt;p&gt;So please wait 48 hours after sending a message before you resend it,
remind me about it, or ask if I have received it. If it has been less
than 48 hours, the absence of a response from me only means you have not given me time to answer.&lt;p&gt;If you are having a conversation with me, please keep in mind that each message you receive from me is a response to the mail you sent 24 to 48 hours earlier, and when writing it, I probably had not yet downloaded your later mail.&lt;p&gt;If you are in big hurry to speak with me, and one day&amp;#x27;s delay would be a serious problem, you can ask my FSF assistant to phone me. Send mail to &amp;lt;rms-assist@fsf.org&amp;gt; saying what you would like to talk with me about, and giving your telephone number. You can also call the Free Software Foundation office at 617-542-5942 (weekday Boston business hours) and ask them to phone me on your behalf. If it&amp;#x27;s really important, try both!&lt;p&gt;An intermediate measure is to email me your phone number and ask me
to phone you.&lt;p&gt;But if there isn&amp;#x27;t enough hurry to warrant phoning me, please don&amp;#x27;t bother the FSF people. The mail you already sent me will reach me before any mail they could send me now on your behalf. I will respond as soon as I can.&lt;p&gt;To contact the Free Software Foundation, use one of the addresses in
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fsf.org&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;contact&amp;#x2F;email&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fsf.org&amp;#x2F;about&amp;#x2F;contact&amp;#x2F;email&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;If you do not wish to receive this message ever again, please send a message to rms-autoreply-control@gnu.org with the subject &amp;quot;OFF&amp;quot;.
Otherwise, you might receive a reply like this one up to once a month.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Etheryte</author><text>No, he&amp;#x27;s reasonable enough to explain why and how long it takes to respond to the massive amount of mail he must receive daily.</text></comment>