[LINK] Whacky Disclaimers again

[Richard Chirgwin]

Adam Todd wrote:
> At 07:02 14/06/2008, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>   
>> At 03:23 PM 14/06/2008, Adam Todd wrote:
>>     
>>>> And why do I have to return the email to the originator if it's not
>>>> for me?  That just seems silly.
>>>>         
>> I've had two situations of 'uh-oh' messages by two people who work in
>> government recently. One was from a council staffer and the other
>>     
> >from a state govt type. Both sent 'Recall' emails after sending.
>
> I've had quite a few of those.  I had one recently from a Government 
> Agency - RECALL LAST MESSAGE, DISREGARD.
>
> Then a new message, followed by yet another recall, then another new 
> message, followed by yet another recall.  i rang and asked what was 
> going on, after reading how inaccurate the contents of the attachment 
> were and they said they were having trouble getting the correct Word 
> Document to be sent to me.
>
>
> Even when they DID get it "right" they still send the wrong exclusions.
>
>
>   
>> I laughed and wrote back to the state guy saying: 'You're joking,
>> right?' He didn't reply. I know we've all done it, but when the idiot
>> who figures out their error and then seriously thinks a message with
>> 'recall' in the subject line actually does anything, I lose the
>> little respect I thought I had in the first place.
>>     
>
> Yep, I'm with you.
>
> It may be a protocol of behaviour that started in the UK or the USA perhaps?
>
> Not sure.
>   
It started in the world of news wire agencies. I can remember at least 
three headers that used to appear on telex machines and later on the 
agency green-screen terminals of my youth:
RECALL - the entire story should be spiked: don't put this in your 
newspaper or you'll look like an idiot!
UPDATE - the previous story, with additions.
CORRECTION - the previous story, with edits.

And these still appear in the agency Web news services...

So my guess is that at some point, someone decided it was a good look to 
add the recall feature to e-mail ... or maybe the wire services asked 
for the feature when they started out in e-mail distrubution!

RC
>
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