I can see this as being really helpful for university profs, for making it more difficult for students to send vague, impossible to answer questions about assignments.
Show HN: Shortwhale – Get fewer, shorter, and better emails
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Re: Show HN: Shortwhale – Get fewer, shorter, and better emails
#22Re: Show HN: Shortwhale – Get fewer, shorter, and better emails
#23Seems like this will most effectively work with high profile people / people in demand.
As an average Joe, my thought process:
- I'm not going to make my friends and family contact me this way. It's just too impersonal. If a friend insisted I contact them this way, I probably wouldn't bother.
- I can't enforce this at work, as much as I'd like to. Not to mention I'm cc'd or included in on a lot of emails that go to multiple people.
But for people like Dan Ariely, this could work great.
Re: Show HN: Shortwhale – Get fewer, shorter, and better emails
#24Looked through the web site and form and whatnot. I don't think people would go through an extra form to contact me, but I can see how it could be useful for people of note like that. When I clicked in I was expecting this to be some sort of email filter that rewrote emails to be shorter (either by humans or by new summarizing algorithms) or a human virtual assistant to help follow some more complex rules than filter…
Yes, maybe. The main idea was to influence behavior (on the sender's end) somehow. This is along the lines of a lot of Dan's research. It goes a long way to tell people how you prefer email, what topics you're interested in, etc.
I agree that it goes a long way to tell people how you prefer email. However, enforcing those preferences (through something like shortwhale) is different than expressing your desire and then hoping that users follow those desires while emailing through ordinary means. In other words, there are two ways of forcing a user to follow those desires - technologically or through force of implied disapproval (with whatever outcome that disapproval would hold, such as non-response). Might this difference be a good opportunity for A/B testing, and perhaps thereby helping Dan's research?
I suspect that the force of disapproval would be just as effective as the technological force for 'meaningful' emails, but would lose effectiveness for less meaningful emails (where Dan's disapproval doesn't mean much to the sender).
If so, then the real issue may be that Dan is getting too many emails from people who don't care what he thinks. The classic way to deal with this is to have one address for people who know you (and care what you think) and another for the unwashed masses. The problem with the classic solution is that it requires someone to monitor the unwashed email, or you suffer the opportunity cost of ignoring possibly important messages from people you don't know (yet). I wonder if Dan is already using this method, and shortwhale is only for the unwashed email address, thus reducing the cost while keeping the opportunity?
Re: Show HN: Shortwhale – Get fewer, shorter, and better emails
#25Thanks for all the comments.
I think that the real issue is how to create a world in which we help the people getting our email understand us better -- including if and when we need an answer.
Email is currently sorted by time, and this is not representing correctly when people should stop their work and attend to it -- shortwhale is trying to solve this.
I also don't think that shortwhale is just for busy people, since distractions are bad for all of us.
Now, I getting back to work
Dan
Re: Show HN: Shortwhale – Get fewer, shorter, and better emails
#26LOVE it!
I have been in love with shortmail but never used it much because they were very unreliable, and finally closed. My e-mail overload comes from singups and newsletters not people, but it is a great tool to hide e-mail on a blog or twitter.
One request though. Could you check your gender form. I have twice changed to female, and it still shows male and refers to em as male.