The "L" in LSU stands for "large." Not merely big: sumo-wrestler large. Big Gulp large. A Hummer of a university. There are 5000 faculty at LSU, a population larger than the faculty and student body combined at the ILU at which I previously toiled.
Imagine, if you will, a football field of standard dimensions. The faculty in Computer Science and Engineering, Mathematics and Statistics, along with a smattering of faculty from other sciences and a few in the Humanities, are sitting in the stands, spectating. The rest of the faculty are crowded together down on the field, wearing football helmets and running into each other at random, over and over and over again. There are no referees.
Such is the electronic behavior of the LSU faculty this afternoon, after geniuses in the registrar's office decided that all 5000 faculty at LSU needed to be added to an unmoderated listserv. Yes, you read that correctly: an unmoderated listserv. We may never understand how the office arrived at this decision, especially in consideration of the fact (announced proudly on the listserv when it sent its first broadcast this morning) that the listserv would be used infrequently to make general announcements (which we already get through the usual university e-mail broadcast system used by, yes, the registrar).
Every single one of 5000 faculty members has now received several hundred messages containing short little phrases like "sign me up!" later followed by "remove me from this list" and much later by "remove me from this goddamn list you fucking idiots!" (I saved that last one, and I keep rereading it because it makes me happy.)
Friday, May 15, 2009
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19 comments:
The gradlist I belong to is like that. Someone will post something, maybe about housing or a question about how to insert an equation into their thesis. Then someone else will post, 'Please remove me from this list', even though when they signed up they were told how to unsubscribe. Aaaaand... We're off!
Another half dozen will ask to be unsubbed. Someone will post the email address for unsubbing, while someone else calls the requesters idiots, and soon lively if not exactly civilized comments on the intelligence, cleanliness, and ancestry of each poster fly back and forth, causing more and more people to demand to be unsubbed from the list.
So all in all, there are about twenty to thirty replies to any post, and it's rare than anyone's original question is actually answered.
It's great comedy.
A episode like that happend last year at my school- friend of mine who worked for IT told me about the fiasco with the senior class listserv. I was curious to find out if IT was smart enough to fix the "bug" with all class listervs (not just the senior class). Brilliantly, IT did not fix the system, and needless to say at one point I had close to 400 emails in my inbox. I found it hilarious (since I instigated it), my friends- not so much....
5000 faculty? Thats larger then my entire college!
We have corporate versions of that happen about once every six months. The worst was the morning of September 11, 2001. It stopped rather suddenly and seemed pretty insignificant after that. My favorites are the IT vice presidents who demand to be removed from this list.
My verification word is "diabnort." It sounds like a demonic nerd.
They've reinvented the Usenet newsgroup.
Make popcorn and watch the show.
Oh, those are always fun. Can't forget the chains of people using Reply to All to tell people to stop using Reply to All.
This happened when I was in grad school, the extra twist being that without warning somehow the grad students were all put on some unmoderated departmental lists for undergrads, so it was both annoying and in no way useful.
In addition to the "sign me up!" "remove me!" emails going to out everyone, there started to be large numbers of "come on everyone, stop replying!" and "when you ask to be removed, it goes to everyone, please stop spamming us" and "please please don't post to this listserv any more guys!", which continued all day except that by the end of the day there was a lot more swearing and name calling. The irony of these last sorts of posts going out to the entire listserv apparently was entirely lost on the senders. The list existed for approximately 10 hours before mass outrage got it taken down.
This is called an e-mail storm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_storm
Apparently it once happened at the State Department.
This also happened in a professional society newslist I was part of several years ago. The whole episode was later recounted in the monthly newsletter, since it was so much fun. The most memorable messages for me were "Why do you ask me to remove you from the list? Remove ME from the list first!" and my absolute favorite (after it was clear this was a freeforall) "Hey John, you old bastard! Long time no see. Let's grab some beers sometime. By the way, how can I get removed from this list?"
I'm pretty goddamned sure I was witness to that fiasco.
A brilliant move for all involved.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAH! That shit is genuine comedy!
Well, real fun starts to begin when an evil genius constructs a filter for the mail passing thru the listserv and then - concluding that they contain nothing relevant to him - sending it back to the list...
Sweet heavenly daylights.
My favorite list serve post. Metafilter thread about free bananas, which brought a company's email system to the bring of chaos.
Me too!
@Matt M
I laughed so hard at that link I had tears in my eyes.
unsubscibe (sic)
(OK, yes, I'm joking. The worst is when not only do they send unsub messages to the rebroadcast address rather than the admin address, but they can't even spell the word correctly.)
My favorite is "Randy, is that job still available?" Reply All is not the best choice
Our band director has the entire 300 piece marching band on a listserve. One day, there was a chance for a select few of us to head to a playoff game in Texas and because we would be on a private jet, they needed to know the select few persons' weights. He sent, to the entire listserv, the question, "Please to the thirty who are going, send me your weight." I now know that the girl who looks like she weighs 150 lbs is in actuality 130. I tactfully sent a, "please send your weights directly to Dr. Band Director and not to the listserv." reply.
An unmoderated listserv for 5,000 faculty? Are you sure that you are working at a center for hire learning?
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