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Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

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Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#111

Post by cwmartin »

darau1 wrote: post #97
daveslash wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you an up-vote because I think a variety of different viewpoints is important, but I'm very much in the e-mail camp. My biggest reason is simply: it's the only ubiquitous, decentralized, open protocol that I can think of. I can run my own server if I want, an I can interact with anybody with an e-mail address . Sure, there was XMPP for IM, but that doesn't have wide adoption; same with other protocols.

I really think all email needs is a fresh coat of paint. I believe the ruby on rails team worked on something like this, but I forget the name of the service

You’re probably thinking about Hey https://www.hey.com. The issue I see with it is that it goes beyond a refreshed interface and breaks IMAP compatibility.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#112

Post by mumblemumble »

anonytrary wrote: post #106
paxys wrote: post #3

I'm on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. I haven't used email outside of work for many years now, and don't miss it one bit. And even at work most communication now happens on Slack. The digital world has evolved since 1997, and email simply hasn't kept up. I skimmed a couple articles on the blog and my biggest problem with it is that the author is making a social rather than technological argument (which are a…

At old job, I remember working with external orgs and my coworkers. Coworkers would pretty much talk over Slack. We would use email/zoom for communication with external orgs. At new job, we use Slack Connect and I think it replaces a lot o that external emailing.

As someone who has to interface as a client with companies that want us to use Slack Connect, I just hate it.

It's one more information stream I have to monitor, by manually going and checking it. Even if work used Slack - we don't - I'd still have to manually navigate among teams to cycle through all my incoming communications. And bringing additional colleagues into the conversation on a purpose-specific, temporary basis is much higher friction than it is with email. Instead of just CCing them on an email, I have to get them invited to that company's Slack, and they have to go through the hassle of setting up an account. And then, since they didn't install the app, I still have to manually prompt them to sign in whenever I see that they aren't remembering to include that Slack in their manual rounds. Which they aren't, because Slack Connect is oftentimes their first experience with having to do manual rounds to purpose-specific locations in order to communicate with people like that.

I've never really got their "move out of siloed email communication" sales pitch. It's like, out of the silo and into a different silo that's deeper and also on fire.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#113

Post by magwa101 »

Email, yes. It involves reading and writing. It takes time, like anything. It can have threads. It's searchable.

SMS/instant messaging is great for "there in 2 minutes", even then, why not email?

In the end the internet wants to sell you the next big thing to cure your overload woes. But you can't replace the need for thought.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#114

Post by paxys »

darau1 wrote: post #98
paxys wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email has very real limitations, imposed both by the protocol itself and by lack of consensus among all the major and minor clients.

Can you give some examples? I've never seen any mentioned.

End-to-end encryption, large attachments, managing group messages (aka "reply all" problem), changing message subject, quoted messages when replying, HTML/CSS formatting, sorting/labeling/folders, tracking protections, sending messages over websocket, heck even basic message threading. None of this works consistently across different clients.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#115

Post by darau1 »

pfranz wrote: post #110
darau1 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples? I've never seen any mentioned.

Sending private information is the first thing I think of--from a bunch of aspects. Secure in transit has had a bunch of different, awkward implementations. My biggest concern is sending tax documents and it sitting in someone's archive folder (or sent folder) for years until their account is compromised. So I often have organizations that send email pointing to their proprietary webmail. The alternative is sneakerne…

Unless you physically hand your taxes in, isn't any solution technically vulnerable to being compromised?

Also, wouldn't encryption fix this problem? I don't understand how it might be implemented in the real world, but if you encrypt with your private key, then their public key the message should be safe in transit, and at rest (unless they leave it decrypted on disk)

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#116

Post by darau1 »

cwmartin wrote: post #111
darau1 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think all email needs is a fresh coat of paint. I believe the ruby on rails team worked on something like this, but I forget the name of the service

You’re probably thinking about Hey https://www.hey.com . The issue I see with it is that it goes beyond a refreshed interface and breaks IMAP compatibility.

Yes, that's what I was thinking of. What does it do wrong? I was actually thinking of signing up, but it is too expensive.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#117

Post by darau1 »

paxys wrote: post #114
darau1 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples? I've never seen any mentioned.

End-to-end encryption, large attachments, managing group messages (aka "reply all" problem), changing message subject, quoted messages when replying, HTML/CSS formatting, sorting/labeling/folders, tracking protections, sending messages over websocket, heck even basic message threading. None of this works consistently across different clients.

But those are problems with /the client/. Not the protocol.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#118

Post by SubiculumCode »

lhorie wrote: post #86
daveslash wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you an up-vote because I think a variety of different viewpoints is important, but I'm very much in the e-mail camp. My biggest reason is simply: it's the only ubiquitous, decentralized, open protocol that I can think of. I can run my own server if I want, an I can interact with anybody with an e-mail address . Sure, there was XMPP for IM, but that doesn't have wide adoption; same with other protocols.

If anything, I like email now because these days people in my circles only use it for informational purposes, which means no annoying chain messages, empty inspirational videos, Facebook conspiracies and their ilk. Also, unlike the unfiltered stream model of chat, you can organize emails into folders, delete useless ones and actually have a decent chance at finding past things via keyword search (because email subjec…

I agree. My work has both an unofficial slack and official email. Email is for the serious, no nonsense posts. Slack can have a mix, but with the understanding that it is more informal. We do not pay for slack, so this informality is enforced by the message/content being unavailable as we go on.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#119

Post by matvore »

swiley wrote: post #91
paxys wrote: post #3

I'm on the exact opposite end of the spectrum. I haven't used email outside of work for many years now, and don't miss it one bit. And even at work most communication now happens on Slack. The digital world has evolved since 1997, and email simply hasn't kept up. I skimmed a couple articles on the blog and my biggest problem with it is that the author is making a social rather than technological argument (which are a…

>The digital world has evolved since 1997, and email simply hasn't kept up. Evolved beyond instant text messages? because that's all email is. Honestly I hate IM tools. The threading is crap, the search is crap, the startup time is crap. there's no understanding of who can read what or what the edit history of messages are (I've been in IMs with people who will edit their messages days later to gasslight you, that al…

  > edit their messages days later to gasslight you
That is a good point. I like to say `s/foo/bar/` to correct myself rather than edit the message. This is also important if people are receiving e-mail notifications for new messages but not for message edits.

Re: Just Use Email – How to Use Email for Everything

#120

Post by paxys »

darau1 wrote: post #117
paxys wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

End-to-end encryption, large attachments, managing group messages (aka "reply all" problem), changing message subject, quoted messages when replying, HTML/CSS formatting, sorting/labeling/folders, tracking protections, sending messages over websocket, heck even basic message threading. None of this works consistently across different clients.

But those are problems with /the client/. Not the protocol.

They are all problems with the protocol, considering that the protocol doesn't define how to do any of this.
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