Didn’t even know that it is automatically added 
it’s automatically appended to non-ACO recipients - purposefully done to stop ‘internal’ email chains getting stupidly long because of the disclaimer
We went through a spate of people starting their emails with wording such as “Email authorised by Sqn Ldr Bloggs”, because some muppet once decided that nobody was allowed to send to the Wing-wide all.wing@ email address without Sqn Ldr authorisation.
God knows what point they think there was in including the wording having gained such authority… (It’s as though they’d seen “Release-Authorised” in the subject lines of emails destined to go outside the MOD system and gotten confused); Or why someone felt it important to introduce such a rule in the first place.
Aside from the fact that very rarely indeed does anyone ever actually need to use that address (since it includes everyone - chaplains, CivCom, &c) if there is a genuine reason why the hell should one need to go asking for permission?
We still get the occasional throw back where someone sends their email to WHQ asking them to forward it on to everyone… JUST SEND THE BLOODY EMAIL!
I guess what’s needed is a course in “how to use email”. It should be pretty common knowledge - it clearly isn’t!
I know of a couple of Wings who now mandate (to some extent, at least) that the all.* address is BCCd, to prevent reply-all… which isn’t actually a bad idea.
In general tho, I think there should be more use of email lists. Not many people (relatively) seem to know any apart from all.* and all-ocs.*, which means messages either go to far too many ppl, or are too few ppl
A previous OC wing had made a few very grumpy comments at Wing events because people were not replying to his “nil return” emails… This was supported by some WSOs who confirmed sight of the emails.
Later, when I took over a dormant wing account I discovered a load of emails, intended for everyone, which I had never seen. It turns out that he’d gotten the correct address for “all WSOs” but had apparently invented his own shortcut out of thin air for emailing all squadrons. I must confess to taking a certain level of pleasure in informing him why nobody had responded when next he ranted that he was being ignored…
Ahh… BCC… That’s a tricky one.
Officially nobody should ever by sending emails BCC - It is supposed to be transparent so that every party can see where the email has gone (and so that many eyes can spot for errors or potential pitfalls such as sending to the wrong person).
Internally I’d say that we shouldn’t be using BCC at all and instead should be teaching people how not to ignorantly reply-all by mistake.
The one place where it would come in handy is if bulk emailing civilians - parents and cadets, &c so as not to disclose everyone’s personal email address to everyone else.
There are probably lots of features of the email system (and Bader and indeed MS Office in general) which are simply unknown to most.
How to setup an email signature and out of office reply is one that seems strangely unfamiliar to many.
How to use styles in Word to format documents (instead of using the ‘typewriter approach’ - in place formatting, typing paragraph numbers, lists, &c) is something so fundamental and basic that I’m still surprised by how few people know about it.
2 Likes
In the instances I’ve seen it, the etiquette has been for the first line of the email to say
BCCd to all.<wing>
I get the pros and cons tho, I’m pretty on the fence about it
Personally, I can see the advantages to stealthy use of BCC… If, say, I wanted to copy a colleague into a subtly sarcastic reply to a third party 
However these wings who introduce “rules” which order subordinates to do something which the JSP and AP explicitly state is forbidden is taking the pish.
I’ve seen exactly what you describe and whilst I’ll credit the etiquette at least, in all bar one case I can say that there was absolutely no need for that mail to have been sent to all.wing.
Laziness? Ignorance? Who knows… But it doesn’t half irritate me.
2 Likes
While its pretty and all, it’s a huge waste or inbox storage space when the entire wing has that in their signature.
4 Likes
Especially when it’s duplicated a few hundred times, first by being sent to every account in the wing, and then again every time some wally replies all.
1 Like
That fabulous email stream of reply all was over a year ago now… we must be due another!
4 Likes
Well that makes me sad.
What cheesegate?
2 Likes
My personal favourite was following our email accounts going live, being told we were not allowed to use them to email any person / address outside of the organisation!
Cheesegate indeed!
1 Like
@alexw Classic misunderstanding of how the real world works. Can’t even begin to imagine how you would operate in the day job if you couldn’t use your work email to send things outside the business.
I wouldn’t use my real personal email for anything cadet related, I created an email just for cadet stuff.
The funniest thing was when we were told to only use cadet email addresses as business and personal ones were supposed open to spam etc. One of the WSOs who worked in the industry pointed out that most businesses/organisations will have far better ‘defences’ than the cadet system. Which seemed fair as many of us got a load of spam from banks, building societies and online payment sites, when we’d never used them in a cadet context. Even now I get odd things through, but like my other email addresses are just deleted.
Someone from my wing is clearly watching this thread with intent 
Although I get what you are saying…this only works internally.
With my RBL hat on
Not as a rule so much but certainly guidance is external emails should be Bcc’d if multiple recipients - this is the RBLs reaction to GDPR.
Although the vicar knows the bugle, whose is married into the WI who lives next door to the Mayor, whose nephew runs the Scouts…whose wife runs the Guides etc…ie everyone knows everyone it’s how it is done
Indeed, I agree.
Which is why I followed up by saying:
1 Like
The one place where it would come in handy is if bulk emailing civilians - parents and cadets, &c so as not to disclose everyone’s personal email address to everyone else.
^This, given that there is no easy way to mail merge we send a monthly update to parents, addressed to the OC from the training account, with parents as BCC.
1 Like
Just received this…
Not sure what is worse, the colour combination on a single row of text of the inclusion of instructor qualifications