Those that can and do deal with the additional layers of crapola, that is.
Are you seriously saying that you think this is a good idea? So far, what I am seeing is not a better routing system. What I am seeing is more crap to deal with before I am allowed to send a simple friggin’ email.
And it ain’t for the convenience of those doing so.
A month ago, you and I enjoyed the convenience of being able to simply dash off an email to the President of the United States. Was this a major thing? Not really. But it is something we have now lost to a bureaucratic mess. You can no longer send an email without having to fill out a mess of paperwork… thus decreasing the likelihood that many of us will DO so.
If this does not bother YOU, peachy. If you don’t care that the current administration has taken one more little step in the process of not only NOT LISTENING, but ensuring we KNOW they aren’t listening… and that it’s apparently OKAY, because nobody CARED… well, there’s not a damn thing I can say that will convince you otherwise.
Perhaps we’ll see each other at the re-education camps, later on, and we can debate the point, face to face…
How interesting. First they make you click a half dozen times- the horror!- in order to send an ED-mail, next it’s rounding up the troublemakers and stuffing them in internment camps.
Yup, I can see the clear logical progression there.
Yes, I am, although the interface could use some work. **
Then you aren’t paying attention.
Put yourself in the shoes of the White House. You get 15,000 emails per day on a broad range of issues, all of which have to get routed to an appropriate staffer. With standard e-mail, there is no clean way to do this efficiently. That means time is wasted being sure that, say, an email asking about foriegn policy doesn’t get sent to the staffer assigned to answer inquiries about tax policy.
Using a web form with dropdown lists dramatically increases the chances that any given e-mail will arrive in the right staffer’s hands. That means less wasted time re-routing the email, which in turn means the email’s author will get a response to his or her inquiry faster.
The couple of seconds of extra “crap” you have to deal with helps insure you get a prompt reply to your inquiry. That is a good tradeoff.
I also note that it helps the White House gauge the mood of those sending them emails. Via the automated process, the president’s staff can see that, say X% of those sending in inquiries about tax policy were supportive of the president’s position and X% were opposed. That helps the White House translate the barrage of emails into useful information. I would hope you can see why that is a good thing. **
Dearie, if you consider this relatively breif web form to be a “mess of paperwork,” you don’t know the meaning of that phrase. God help you if you ever have to apply for a mortgage. **
There aren’t enough :rolleyes: in the world. Sheesh.
Given that the revision makes it easier for the powers-that-be to disregard the opinions of the regular people they’re supposed to be serving, I think they very much view it as an enhancement.
I’m sure you noticed during the carrier speech how they made the codpiece on the flight suit extra spacious so as not to crimp the Erection in Chief.
It seems to me that if people had an issue with the president’s policies, or whatever, and they saw no option for such, one helpful hint might be to simply pick a random topic and then put in the first paragraph “There was no relevant filter option in the drop-down menu I used to send you this, so I picked a random topic.” That might get the message across if enough people did it.
I agreed with Brutus yesterday. Today I am agreeing with DCU.
I think we all know what that means. The Apocalypse is upon is:D
Aside from the bit about saying whether you agree or disagree with White House policy, much of the rest of it seems like just a sorting method for the poor underlings who have to try to manage the pile - and the part I quoted above sounds like a type of spam filtering that various companies provide to anyone who signs up for a modest fee. Can you even imagine how much spam that address gets? I don’t blame them for that part at least.
I’d rather not think about how much Bush must think he needs to increase his WMD size by five inches and simultaneously make thousands of dollars a week through a home business, thanks, Ferret Herder
If the president wants to irritate his constituents by hiding behind an overly complex email interface, that’s his preogative. As a libruhl, I applaud his initiative in this matter, and hope he applies it to all channels of communication with the electorate.
You know, all of you who think this actually means that the emails will now be routed to the correct staffer are living on Planet Delusion.
What it means is that now they can just lump the number of emails received for each of their preselected topics pro and con, and then come up with a quick and dirty total, without ever having to open a single email again!!
In other words, the president is now only interested in numbers, and only on preselected topics. Say you want to complain about his new email policy. Tough shit. You can include it in an email on foreign policy, but it will just disappear into the ether because NO STAFFER WILL ACTUALLY OPEN IT.
Yup, internment camps next for your suffering pleasure…
I’d so love to write and mention that this is a cowardly way of avoiding opinions held by the actual people he is supposed to be listening to…but I guess there isn’t a “you’re a cowardly SOB and I can’t wait for you be ousted from office next year” option, huh?
I think more effectively gauging the number of pro/con emails on a given topic is part of the reason for this system. I don’t see why that is such a terrible goal. Isn’t the whole point of writing the White House to make your views known? Doesn’t a system that helps make sense of the deluge of emails facilitate that goal?
I disagree, however, that no staffer will open the email. My understanding is that the White House does send out responses to incoming email. Granted, for the most part they’re canned responses, but you still need a staffer to look at the email and decide which canned response needs to be sent out. Even within the broad categories provided on the web form, there’s plenty of room for different issues that require human eyes to sort out.
I agree that there need to be more choices, and an “Other” option as well. Consider that this is the complete list of suboptions under “Foriegn Policy”: Afghanistan, China, Foriegn Aid, Human Rights, Iraq, Landmines, Nuclear Weapons. Gee, I hope I don’t have a question about, say, Liberia or North Korea unrelated to nukes or human rights. Hope I don’t have an inquiry on that pesky Israeli-Palestine issue. And what the hell am I supposed to do if I want to exercise my God-given right to complain about the French?
No, no, by sorting the mail into specific cagetories, and you’re either pro or against (that’s in an earlier screen), it means that they can just pop out the correct canned response without any type of scrutiny. Call me a cynic, but I really, REALLY doubt that those emails will ever be seen by human eyes.
Like I said, the categories are too broad for that kind of response.
The emails will be seen by who they’ve always been seen by: some anonymous 18-year-old intern working for free so he can stick “White House” on his resume. If you think those emails (or even letters) ever reached the hands of anyone important in prior administrations, you’re sadly mistaken.
