PhotoDude.com

Thu. Aug 22, 2002

E-Mail Inundation

E-Mail Inundation – It pains me greatly, but I’ve just sent off the following e-mail:

To: postmaster@inbox.gov

PhotoDude

This (currently at the top of Steven’s page), I believe, marks the fifth time in the past month or so that I’ve seen someone with a web site say, in essence, ”I hereby surrender to my Inbox. As part of surrender terms, hundreds of you have been deleted.” You can make me Number Six.

"If you’ve sent me mail and I haven’t answered it, it isn’t anything personal. These days I’m receiving between 70 and 100 thoughtful and well written messages per day, many of which are quite long and/or send me one or more links. I try to answer as many as I can, but inevitably a lot are going to fall through the cracks, and much as I might like to, I can’t read everything that everyone points me to me, and still have any time to write for the site. The number of ’I really should answer this but I don’t have time now’ messages is now 250, and it keeps going up rather than down."

"I do read everything, and I try to answer as much as I can either directly or by posting (as a way of leveraging the time) but I’m afraid that if I haven’t answered you in three days I’m probably never going to. But that doesn’t mean I hate you, and I do appreciate all the mail I’m getting. (It’s very gratifying, even though it’s also overwhelming.)"

What he said. I won’t bore you with numbers, as adding it up would just depress me. But suffice it to say, I was way behind on e-mail last weekend before the election, and since then I’ve gotten over 500 non-spam e-mails. In addition to e-mail about topics in my weblog, I get a lot of photo and web related technical questions, all well intended, but mostly requiring a lengthy answer for which I rarely have the time anymore. I do read it all. But responding to it all is nearly impossible for this one human, and my staff spends the day doing nothing but holding down the furniture (cats are worthless assistants).

So if you send me an e-mail, know that it does get read, that I will try to answer, but rather than get mad if you get no reply, know that your vengeance is built in guilt.