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What happened, Gmail?

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Re: What happened, Gmail?

#71

Post by jasode »

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.

>To me, it's downright scary that someone would want Google telling them what is important in their own mailbox.

You probably have a much lower volume of email than the suffering email users who want AI algorithms to help them manage their inbox.

The analogy would be something like "Pagerank". You can't lecture a web surfer that he shouldn't leave the importance of web pages to an algorithm like Pagerank. Instead, he should read the 1 billion pages himself to determine which is most important to his search query.

There are not 1 billion emails in an inbox but any number of messages greater than a few hundred is the equivalent in information unmanageability.

It's an inescapable math problem. If you only have ~16 waking hours a day, you may only be able to realistically dedicate ~4 hours to reading and responding to emails. Your allocation of that finite time is a zero-sum game. The math problem: the outside world can stuff more unimportant emails in your inbox than you have the human capability to read and curate. Therefore you must have a robot "reader" assist you.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#72

Post by pferde »

verletx64 wrote: post #64
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.

How many things are we supposed to do as people? Everybody touts options spanning every domain going from email to mobile devices and it's like, oh it's just a bit of configuration/tweaking for a few hours and then you're good to go. So yeah, hand holding is good, because to be honest, I don't get up on a Saturday morning and say "oh boy I can't wait to setup my email filters, right after I tweak my Arch Linux instal…

I kind of get what you are saying - there are lot of things we should not be caring about and let automation take care of. But in my opinion, what is and is not important to someone is something deeply personal, and I find it scary that someone would want to relinquish control particularly over that.

I see it as "can someone tie my shoelaces for me please?" level of non-responsibility. And it scares me.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#73

Post by jasode »

pmlnr wrote: post #32

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 promoti…

>Email was meant to be kept simple, [...] instead of trying to come up with a new email, stop breaking the current one, and keep using it.

The "email was meant to be kept simple" can't be stated in isolation. Many suffering recipients of email see the outside world stuffing their inbox as making "email complicated". They can't control how others misuse email.

Paul Graham explained that email has become overwhelming for him and his peers.[1]

What's your recommendation for their pain points with the current email system?

[1] from 7m29s to 11m50s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI&feature=youtu.be...

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#74

Post by Normal_gaussian »

pmlnr wrote: post #51
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It also fundamentally breaks with what the user expects. The user expects their email to be theirs, to do with what they will. I know of no situation in which I would like an email which I specifically cannot print; I have no idea how I would explain it to my Grandfather.

e-MAIL. The stress is on the mail part. When your Grandfather sends a letter via post, he doesn't expect it to be his anymore, does he?

No. He bloody well expects what comes through the door with his name on it to be his to do with as he pleases.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#75

Post by ShorsHammer »

pmlnr wrote: post #32

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 promoti…

> like the promotions tab

Settings >> Inbox type >> Unread first

Suddenly all that junk previously ignored is prominent again. Within a week I had unsubscribed from 95% of unwanted correspondence. Was quite liberating to have a real inbox again.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#76

Post by Yetanfou »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #29
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.

> Spam can be removed by objective filters, Those "objective filters" prevent me from sending email from home (I have to relay through a non-residential IP). I receive about a dozen spam email per day (with occasional surges and lapses). My server accepts everything, and a simple local filter from my mail user agent (Evolution or Thunderbird, mainly) let few through, and false positives are very rare. I'm not sure wh…

A dozen spam messages per day? Lucky you. I did a tally on yesterday's harvest on my server and found the following:

- 57 rejected messages designated as spam by SpamAssassin

- 137 greylisted messages, most of which will end up being spam as those addresses which I communicate with regularly will be in the whitelist.

- 181 connection attempts blocked at the gate due to protocol violations (most of them due to fake HELO, usually trying to connect using my own server's FQDN)

- 144 delivery attempts blocked at RCPT due to the use of blacklisted recipient addresses. This is why using recipient-specific sender addresses makes sense when communicating with commercial, organisational or governmental institutions: it makes it possible both to track down who leaked or sold addresses to spammers as well as to block those addresses entirely.

This domain has been handling mail for close to 23 years now, the server is used daily by about 8 people, it also forwards mail for a few others.

I generally don't see more than one or two spam messages per week in my actual INBOX.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#77

Post by cup-of-tea »

jasode wrote: post #73
pmlnr wrote: post #32

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 promoti…

>Email was meant to be kept simple, [...] instead of trying to come up with a new email, stop breaking the current one, and keep using it. The "email was meant to be kept simple" can't be stated in isolation. Many suffering recipients of email see the outside world stuffing their inbox as making "email complicated" . They can't control how others misuse email. Paul Graham explained that email has become overwhelming…

It seems like he's talking about a very specific use of email. I can't be the only person who actually writes letters to people using email and not expecting anything to end up on their "todo list".

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#78

Post by jasode »

cup-of-tea wrote: post #77
jasode wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Email was meant to be kept simple, [...] instead of trying to come up with a new email, stop breaking the current one, and keep using it. The "email was meant to be kept simple" can't be stated in isolation. Many suffering recipients of email see the outside world stuffing their inbox as making "email complicated" . They can't control how others misuse email. Paul Graham explained that email has become overwhelming…

It seems like he's talking about a very specific use of email. I can't be the only person who actually writes letters to people using email and not expecting anything to end up on their "todo list".

>I can't be the only person who actually writes letters to people using email and not expecting anything to end up on their "todo list".

Many like you definitely exist but your "pure 100% communications only" usage isn't what the Gmail enhancements (that many dislike) were trying to solve.

The blog author, Avi Ashkenazi, wrote:

>From a business perspective I understand that there are more people using Gmail than Calendar, Keep or the new Tasks, but the way Google has attempted to bring people into the fold and have them use add-ons and the rest of their products is just crazy.

There is overlap between the non-communication features that Avi Ashkenazi mentioned and what Paul Graham is talking about. PG recommends creating a new and different protocol. Avi Ashkenazi is saying don't try to shoehorn things like "tasks" into the Gmail UI/UX because it makes it complicated. Google/Alphabet apparently is working from a different philosophical base: many people use Gmail as the central dashboard so let's put everything there.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#79

Post by pmlnr »

jasode wrote: post #73
pmlnr wrote: post #32

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 promoti…

>Email was meant to be kept simple, [...] instead of trying to come up with a new email, stop breaking the current one, and keep using it. The "email was meant to be kept simple" can't be stated in isolation. Many suffering recipients of email see the outside world stuffing their inbox as making "email complicated" . They can't control how others misuse email. Paul Graham explained that email has become overwhelming…

Use CalDAV for tasks sync, keep email for communication?

Again, stop breaking it.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#80

Post by jasode »

pmlnr wrote: post #79
jasode wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Email was meant to be kept simple, [...] instead of trying to come up with a new email, stop breaking the current one, and keep using it. The "email was meant to be kept simple" can't be stated in isolation. Many suffering recipients of email see the outside world stuffing their inbox as making "email complicated" . They can't control how others misuse email. Paul Graham explained that email has become overwhelming…

Use CalDAV for tasks sync, keep email for communication? Again, stop breaking it.

>, keep email for communication? Again, stop breaking it.

It's a matter of a different perspective and "breaking it" is in the eye of the beholder.

For many end users of email (and Google Inc's point-of-view apparently), it's the other users sending me emails that's "breaking it" beyond SMTP's original design intentions.

>Use CalDAV for tasks sync,

E.g. it's the other users who send "tasks" and "appointments" inside a freeform email instead of strictly using CalDAV. Their abuses of email has broken the SMTP system. If overloaded email usage by other humans who don't categorize what they send into strict protocols such as CalDAV is a fact of life, the Google response is to add some complexity to the UX/UI to let users conveniently copy paste it into the sidebars for Tasks and Calendar. Google may be wrong (as the blog post argues) but I think it's worth entertaining the idea that the multipurpose usage of email has already "broken email".

For many people, your suggestion of putting 17k of emails into a single namespace alongside other important emails is not acceptable. They want a UX/UI to make a first crude pass at filtering it into a hierarchy. This does have a negative side effect if "hiding" it from some users who don't notice it's there.

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