My preferred way to deal with email (and snail mail for that matter) is by taking the “what can they do to me?” approach. I destroy anything I receive that I can ignore without consequences (which is most of the email and snail mail I receive). The only email I care to spend time on is that which either is demanding that I do something or providing me with information that I need to know. The former I think is the best possible use of email. The latter is what the situation in this post is about.

While on it’s face it’s better that emails are only delivered to those who need to know the information, the problem with Jasmine’s rationale is that determining who needs to know certain information can actually be pretty hard. For that reason, I would instead recommend some other sort of communication medium altogether for this type of information. Specifically, one that doesn’t require one person to determine who does or doesn’t need to know something, and actively alerts those who very likely need to know the information while passively providing access to those who have an unclear or unrealized need for it.

We have many such communication tools in the form of things like project management software and even threaded forums. Such systems allow people who discover a need for certain information to elect to enter the conversation about it through some sort of subscription mechanism. And anyone who participates is automatically subscribed (and can opt to unsubscribe) under the assumption that participants are very likely to need to know how that conversation progresses. It eases the burden for determining who needs to know information off of the information producer and onto the information consumers, where it’s much easier to manage.