At times working groups can use e-mail in a way that seems to exploit all its weaknesses. Here’s some problem areas that seem to crop up.

Tone
The tone of an e-mail can be somewhat harsh, cold, and even accusatory. Getting across the emotion in written correspondence requires some skill and effort, and often we lack the time and inclination to give tone proper care. This can lead to e-mail threads full of defensive posturing and tangential commentary. It’s best to interpret e-mail literally, and ignore tone, since it’s often misleading. If someone asks, “Have you reviewed my report yet?” don’t imagine they’re saying you’re lazy, just assume they want to know. If you’re concerned about sub-text, switch to another better suited medium to address it; in-person conversations or phone calls, if working remotely. It’s difficult to build positive, comfortable working relationships over e-mail. Keeping touch in a casual way via IM can bridge the gap.

Transience
E-Mail can be a great way to hash issues out. The problem is that an e-mail thread is a poor record of any conclusions that might have been reached, or agreements that have been arrived at. E-mail archives are hard to manage and search, and the thread can be subject to interpretation dependant on out-of-channel communications . Worse still, progress can be lost on the issues, and thrash can take hold for days or weeks, only ended via fatigue and frustration.

Wiki’s are a much better tool for hammering out issues. Discussion can happen in comments, changes can be tracked, and the resulting artifact should be well organized and searchable.

Format
For complex discussion, e-mail in practice has some difficult formatting issues, mostly around quoting and commenting within the thread. This is due to different tools and users behavior when quoting earlier messages. Some folks top-post, others bottom-post, or mix the two. Some messages are plain text, others are html, and attachments of various formats maybe used. The solution to this problem is to agree on some standards on quoting and format. If simple standards become difficult, it’s a sure sign some other medium should be used, or the discussion is too broad to make progress on.

My recommendations are:
- Minimal quoting (don’t quote unless it’s really necessary)
- Bottom-posting (comment after the quote)
- plain-text only.
- Use URLs to reference material on a web server instead of attachments where possible.