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What happened, Gmail?

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Re: What happened, Gmail?

#31

Post by pferde »

halflings wrote: post #16
stephenr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spam can be removed by objective filters, that simply classify the email against known patterns/rules. Who you are or what you like is irrelevant to them. This is not that: it's you, giving a giant personal information sponge, a bigger tap.

What new giant personal information are you giving, really? If you use Gmail, you already trust them with your emails and the interactions you have with these mails. This features makes the experience better for users without having to give any additional information.

Yes, if you're using Gmail, you've already lost, but this IMHO inappropriately affects your workflow by steering your attention to, or away from, certain e-mails. To me, it's potentially no different from what Facebook was caught doing, and in fact, if done carefully, it is an authoritarian's wet dream.

Yes, you can (supposedly) train the "importance" filter, but how many people will do that?

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#32

Post by pmlnr »

Email was meant to be kept simple, and Google is making this exponentially hard with every single "design" iteration. Get off Gmail - it'll break your email.

The article has very good points, especially when it touches the issue of "hidden" mail, like the promotions tab: there are labels and tabs. There should be only one system, and no, don't hide things from the user at this level. When there's 17k mails in promotions, eating up 6GB alert them, let them know. (This ties back to how WordPress keeps hiding anything technical from users, which is also bad[^1])

Filtering on Gmail is outrageous, especially when you compare it to Sieve. No option to match on custom header, seriously?

Things like unprintable email is a bad joke. Unprintable? What if I connect to Gmail with mutt? It gives the sense of a false security.

I'm aware of all the arguments against email, but so far nobody could come up with a robust, reliable (see SMTP retries), async, world wide, federated solution, that even touches the level of email.

Here's a revolutionary idea: instead of trying to come up with a new email, stop breaking the current one, and keep using it.

[^1]: https://www.rarst.net/wordpress/technical-responsibility/

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#33

Post by achamayou »

pferde wrote: post #26
achamayou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important feature of Gmail from the get go was how well it separated Spam from relevant email. I don't think you'll find too many users who prefer to do that manually. It's a matter of degree of course, but scary seems too strong a word.

Yes, up to the point of marking legitimate e-mail from personal domains as spam, even though such domains were set up correctly, including stuff like DKIM or SPF. Also, the wording was "... and what can wait for later", which doesn't sound like spam was meant - I don't think people keep their spam messages and read through them later, e.g. over the weekend. :)

Maybe I'm an exception, but I do scan through my spam from time to time :) Partly to see if I've missed something, but also because it can be amusing.

I agree that spam detection is not an exact science, and that it is in fact quite subjective. It's also quite valuable!

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#34

Post by Jyaif »

chenster wrote: post #12

@google, check this: https://dribbble.com/shots/4020485-Inbox-Client/attachments/... . It's better than yours. Never a fan of material design.. seriously, Google is NOT good at design. Period. I hoped, in this Gmail iteration, Google would finally take the plunge and kill the flat icons and minimalist design and once for all. It's quite the opposite unfortunately. It got flatter and uglier. All so plain and washed ou…

> https://dribbble.com/shots/4020485-Inbox-Client/attachments/...

Font and icon color is too dark. Needs more whitespace too.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#36

Post by Jabbles »

papa_bear wrote: post #30
chenster wrote: post #12

@google, check this: https://dribbble.com/shots/4020485-Inbox-Client/attachments/... . It's better than yours. Never a fan of material design.. seriously, Google is NOT good at design. Period. I hoped, in this Gmail iteration, Google would finally take the plunge and kill the flat icons and minimalist design and once for all. It's quite the opposite unfortunately. It got flatter and uglier. All so plain and washed ou…

Looks like I’d have to do a ton of scrolling to see the amount of info that the old gmail shows me. Everything is too spaced out for me ;(

Google is providing three new layouts to choose from, including a default view that highlights attachments like documents and photos, a comfortable view that doesn’t highlight attachments, and a compact view that increases the amount of messages you can see on a single page. The compact view is the most similar to the existing Gmail design, allowing existing users to keep a similar layout.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/12/17227974/google-gmail-des...

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#37

Post by pferde »

fooker wrote: post #20
stephenr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned elsewhere: spam can be filtered objectively, but importance would have to be identified subjectively.

How does this magical objective spam filter work? How can that same technique not be used for marking important emails?

Because of the word "objective". Different things are important for different people.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#38

Post by pmlnr »

achamayou wrote: post #9
pferde wrote: post #3

Among "needed innovations", the post lists: "A good method for telling users what’s important to read and what can wait for later." To me, it's downright scary that someone would want Google telling them what is important in their own mailbox. Personal responsibility bad, Hand-holding good, apparently.

An important feature of Gmail from the get go was how well it separated Spam from relevant email. I don't think you'll find too many users who prefer to do that manually. It's a matter of degree of course, but scary seems too strong a word.

Right, because hiding without letting people know they have something is spam is good. /s.

It's not. This is how and why people keep missing actually important email, because friend X changed their email address for reasons, but they are not in the contact list, so it must be spam/phishing.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#39

Post by ex3ndr »

ex3ndr wrote: post #27

Article is a little bit biased as a one who worked on messaging apps claiming that messaging (eg Slack) solve communication is just wrong. Outlook screenshot is very simple and clean but... it mentioned as an example of nightmare.. Looks like author got in the his own bubble just like google.

> An efficient way to categorize, filter and search content.

No, no one likes to categorize emails, this is work for someone else or for power users that's not a case for GMail.

> A tool to help users fix mistakes they’ve made, such as sending someone the wrong email, or spelling something incorrectly.

For a long time Telegram didn't want to introduce this feature since if you sent something this should be in other's inbox. If someone can modify your inbox than you won't be able to trust that some random email won't disappear.

> Allowing users to handle their business better through Gmail (e.g. sign documents, approve things, review things).

Uh, guy just want to put everything to GMail while claiming that this is not an "innovation".

> Allowing users to design their emails in a better way.

Do you want to receive emails from your lawyer in comic sans? There is a reason why FB, Slack, Telegram, etc don't allow you to style your text easily.

> Letting users know if someone read their presentation and what parts interested them (DocSend).

Breaking fundamental flow of an email. No one will see if you read and no one will be upset. There are a reason why slack dosen't have read status.

GMail probably have a lot of problems now, but (sorry) this all just unprofessional judgment.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#40

Post by papa_bear »

xoxoavi wrote: post #21
ollebro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont need anything Inbox provides. I just want a list of all my emails, untouched.

I think we are the same ;) and I would apply that to any other service that has a feed (Insta, Facebook etc). But for the people who have a red dot with the number 999999 on their iPhone, there must be something Google should do.

True, I’m up to 20k in my gmail red dot. It’s a big reason I’m desensitized to it now, and I currently have lots of red bubbles on my home screen that I’m too lazy to deal with (and usually social apps that I would t otherwise consider deleting). Considering how many apps abuse the red dot though, I consider being desensitized a plus. It also drives anyone who looks at my phone crazy.
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