I *don't* infer anything from the lack of a response except that I  
didn't get a response.

I do, however, get useful information from a well-behaved OoO message.

And the fact is: while I may know technically that e-mail won't  
necessarily be delivered immediately (or at all), we all _do_ depend  
on it. Increasingly, e-mail is the only information we share with  
strangers. Few Media Relations pages list phone numbers for the PR  
representatives. Unless I already have a relationship with the  
company, I'm unlikely to know their direct line.

And while my example was PR related, it's easily generalizable.  
Yesterday, I sent an e-mail message to someone who'd expressed  
interest in writing an article for me. I didn't get a response, even  
though I said, "The deadline would be the 21st -- can you do it?" I  
don't have a phone number for the guy; all I have is the e-mail.  
Maybe he's out of the office, maybe he's slow to respond, maybe he's  
not interested. How the heck can I know? Meanwhile, I've scratched  
his article from the package; Ruby fans will hate me.

Esther

On Jan 8, 2008, at 2:15 AM, Jethro R Binks wrote:

> On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, WJCarpenter wrote:
>
>>> Summary: you cannot infer anything useful from a lack of response,
>>> other than the fact that you haven't received a response.
>>
>> Yeah, but .... we're not talking about the lack of a response.  We're
>> talking about an out of office message or similar.  You don't have to
>> infer anything from that ... it comes right out an tells you.
>
> Esther was talking about what she infers from getting neither an  
> OoO, nor
> a prompt response to her message,


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