Back from the Dead with a Query:
What are the Ethics of Forwarding Email?
I have just been publicly lambasted for forwarding an email with critical comments about a certain article (submitted to a journal that I am currently co-editing) to the authors of said article. The comments were from my co-editor. The article is authored by my former supervisor and one of my former colleagues. I fully supported my co-editor's comments as a preface to the forwarded email (which was not at all nasty in tone). The authors disagreed with the comments and I forwarded their response to my co-editor. She (my co-editor) subsequently sent a "hurt and angry" email to me, the authors in question, and the Editor-in-Chief (who until that point was not involved).
I have egg on my face now (and have mucked up a series of personal/professional relationships)--but I feel that I acted with good intentions (if not good judgment). Perhaps I should have asked whether I could forward the email--or at least represented the comments as solely my own opinion.
Is this problem due to the Brave New World of Email or simply my own egregious lack of tact? Or both?
Respectfully yours,
Art
Posted by at August 01, 2001 09:57 PM