intertwingly

What would happen if all company email was public within the company? Everyone would use webmail and IM for all their *real* conversations, and company email would become a wasteland of VP proclamations and baby/wedding/engagement/divorce/fuckbuddy announcements. In other words, not a big change.

I'll tell you what does work though: make those WebTrends (corporate web filtering proxy) reports public. IT did that accidentally at a previous job, and Internet abuse dropped to zero as word spread about people's weird surfing habits.

Mark, I guess I'm more of an optimist on this subject than you are. I've now worked on a number of projects where virtually all communication is public. With people I seldom (if ever) meet.

I've seen it work.

You've worked in better companies than I have, then. (Although the company I work for now is wonderful, if a tad small. You don't really get into corporate politics and CYA-ness until you employ more people than can fit in one room.)

Does your job have irritating IT policies? A recent discussion on Sam Ruby's blog reminded me how lucky I am not to work for a company with an overly restrictive Internet usage policy. I've always considered restrictive IT policies as detrimental to employee morale because they engender an us vs. them mentality, punishes many for the crimes of a few and encourages employees to leave work early.