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Vladimir_M comments on Research methods - Less Wrong
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Comments (41)
Swimmer963:
This seems to me like it might be a very prudent measure. As far as I know, emails are legally considered as written documents bearing no less official weight than the most formal correspondence on letterhead paper. At the same time, it's very hard for people to keep this in mind and refrain from using email carelessly, with no more caution and forethought than casual workplace talk. Forcing them to duplicate every email in paper involves a large overhead, but this may well turn out to be cost-effective by preventing all sorts of liabilities potentially incurred by careless emails.
(nods) Sure, if I really can't expect employees to treat email as the kind of thing that it actually is, just because it is that kind of thing, then the next best alternative is to force them to treat email as something else.
Though if I were really going to go down that road, perhaps I'd do better to require that all employees jog around the building every time they send an email. Same benefit, plus it wastes less paper, and it's healthier.
TheOtherDave:
I don't know how serious you are about this, but even ignoring the problem of weirdness signaling, I don't think this would be anywhere as effective. People usually have the correct instinct to treat paper documents and correspondence as an inherently serious and solemn matter, and coupling every email with producing a paper document is thus likely to be much more effective than coupling it with some meaningless ritual.
I'd say the casual attitude towards business emails is one of the greatest examples of practical irrationality in today's world. I find it fascinating how many smart people, including lawyers and senior managers, who can't possibly be ignorant of the legal weight of business emails, still can't resist the urge to use them as a medium for casual chit-chat, offhand remarks, and informal discussions, until lawsuits hit them as a result.