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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

#141

Post by Qwertious »

matvore wrote: post #119
swiley wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Honestly, invisible edits are a UI problem that people really ought to solve - highlight (or in some way indicate with a color change or such) that something has been edited (and specifically, what has changed vs what is unedited in the comment).

Or perhaps restrict editing, e.g. instead of being able to delete text, you can only strike through+slightly shrink+grey out text.

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

#142

Post by bccdee »

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…

Yeah, this person's position is totally baffling to me.

> group instant messaging is, largely, distracting and of little value (more on this later) and can best be dealt with in weekly ‘batches’, if it’s required at all.

I mean, I dunno about this guy, but I like interacting with my friends. I'll leave a group chat open all day on my other monitor. It's like a break room where you can chat with whoever's around, or all get together and have a nice conversation. Group chats are one of my favourite forms of online social interaction. You don't have to like them, but I can't imagine not at least understanding the appeal.

> people are finding ways to pushback on the ‘instant’ part of instant messaging, to put space and breathing room between when a message is sent and when they ‘deal’ with it.

Uh, yeah! That's part of what makes them work. They slide seamlessly between synchronous and asynchronous discussion. If I want to hear your thoughts at 1pm, I can message you. If you're busy, you can reply later. And if I'm available when you reply, then we can have our conversation synchronously. But if our schedules never align, we'll keep going back and forth until our discussion is over.

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

#144

Post by NikolaNovak »

solidasparagus wrote: post #121
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 can interact with anybody with an e-mail address Why is that a good thing? My email is full of spam both literal and mundane (email notification from stuff I only occasionally care about like CI or products). My Messenger account has zero noise because I can't be contacted by companies - only friends I've chosen to let in.

I don't feel that's a medium / tool issue, I've found it's a usage pattern issue.

I have many email addresses. My most personal is known to people I like and trust. I use it the way many people use IM. I get zero zero spam in it. The emails I use for business or subscriptions or untrustworthy friends of course is spammy.

I imagine if one uses any IM service to enroll into dozens of services / products / subscriptions / websites / etc... Spam will come regardless of medium :)

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

#145

Post by bccdee »

thisCtx wrote: post #139
solidasparagus wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're coming from a position that email is good and it's worth configuring it to work well. But I don't particularly like email. I have zero interest in setting up aliases or filters when the problem simply doesn't exist when I use a better tool.

So your messenger app read your mind? Pretty sure you create a whitelist on that too, yes? Of phone numbers, usernames, or …email addresses… depending on what the app uses, that you wish to hear from? Check out Spike for IOS. I’m not saying you have to USE it, but that it’s a UX problem, not an “email” problem.

It didn't read my mind, it's just that my instant messaging is 0% automated messages and 100% people I know. My email is 98% automated messages from services I signed up for using my email, and 2% my mom.

The configuration is never over with email, because every time I sign up for something, I've got more filters to set up. With instant messaging? There was never a problem to begin with

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

#146

Post by paxys »

darau1 wrote: post #136
paxys wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then should we not amend the protocol to define these things? Why reinvent the wheel, when we could improve it?

Yes we should, but people have been trying for 20 years and it hasn't happened yet. The wheel has been successfully reinvented already.

The biggest reason for it is that in practice email isn't as open and decentralized as people like to think. For most of its history all advancements were controlled by Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo, and today it is controlled by Microsoft and Google.

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

#147

Post by anonytrary »

mumblemumble wrote: post #112
anonytrary wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also it's moving from a more decentralized silo to a completely centralized one. Email continues to be a groundbreaking communication technology. I feel like one company being able to pull the plug on that might be really scary. I guess email is pretty centralized, but if you get banned by Gmail for whatever reason, you can always go run your own email and continue to work within the larger ecosystem.

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

#148

Post by na85 »

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.

Email has its warts I'll give you that, but since 1997 the world has gotten objectively worse in terms of open, distributed messenging. Everything is a fucking walled garden controlled by some data-harvesting megacorp these days.

I like email because I can roll my own server (and have done so) or I can choose to trust one of several commercial providers and we can all interoperate.

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

#149

Post by lhorie »

bccdee wrote: post #145
thisCtx wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your messenger app read your mind? Pretty sure you create a whitelist on that too, yes? Of phone numbers, usernames, or …email addresses… depending on what the app uses, that you wish to hear from? Check out Spike for IOS. I’m not saying you have to USE it, but that it’s a UX problem, not an “email” problem.

It didn't read my mind, it's just that my instant messaging is 0% automated messages and 100% people I know. My email is 98% automated messages from services I signed up for using my email, and 2% my mom. The configuration is never over with email, because every time I sign up for something, I've got more filters to set up. With instant messaging? There was never a problem to begin with

So you're saying you voluntarily gave out your primary email address and then don't like that they are emailing you? Why give it out in the first place then? It's free to setup a dummy email address for these purposes.

Unless you're complaining about getting reminder emails from upcoming doctor appointments, bills and the like. But my impression was that getting those are a feature...

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