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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

#161

Post by egypturnash »

Qwertious wrote: post #141
matvore wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I hope you relly rely lik typos siting there forever.

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

#162

Post by a012 »

This ticks me in the right place. Where I work we're already using Gsuite like the rest of the world, and then for some reasons the director board decided to move _everything_ company communication to FB's Workplace. And when pandemic hits, everybody have to actively watch for announcements/notices on Workplace, because it's the only place that they send out messages. So why not just send notices to all@company.com email address and everybody got it instantly if the message is too important? They post it on Workplace and mark it Important, then FB sends a brief emails to everybody teasing half of the post. Again, why not just use email?

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

#163

Post by arp242 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #10
thaumaturgy wrote: post #9

Gmail alone currently handles over 50% of US email traffic, with Microsoft and a handful of other service providers taking up a good chunk of the other half. These large providers all use internal blacklists and filtering rules, which cannot be queried, and no support is available if you get blackholed. Worst of all, Gmail especially isn't great about tagging messages as spam; a good chunk of messages sent from outsi…

> Worst of all, Gmail especially isn't great about tagging messages as spam My experience is the exact opposite of yours - I find Gmail's spam detection absolutely amazing. I get essentially zero spam in my inbox, and perhaps 4-6 false positives in the spam folder a month. >As a Gmail user, there is nothing you can do to verify that you're getting all of the legitimate mail traffic that is being sent to you. What oth…

> 4-6 false positives in the spam folder a month.

That seems like a lot; with FastMail I get basically 0. The last time this happened was years ago.

I do get the very occasional spam, maybe 5 messages/month or so. Most of them are from marketing agencies that want to "collaborate" on my website or some such and have a spam score of 0 or close to it, and arguably isn't "spam" in the same way as "grow a bigger dick!"-spam is. I doubt gmail would catch those too.

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

#164

Post by jesterson »

boplicity wrote: post #105
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my experience too: there are a couple providers that are more difficult (Verizon, iirc), but I’ve never found a personal email server much of a hassle to maintain.

I run my own email server, and have for many years. More recently, Verizon/Aol/Yahoo have been a pain in the butt for our larger email lists, even though we run a very clean operation. Still, our deliverability is, on the whole, better than through the much more expensive providers, such as Mailchimp.

I second that. Around 10 years ago it did consumed some time to set up everything, but since then I didn't touch it at all.

Much better and more flexible than any proprietary mail system.

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

#165

Post by jesterson »

izgzhen wrote: post #135

I don’t want to dismiss the author’s point. But here is a related point: Choosing what tool to communicate is a social decision, not a personal one. You can’t prove the tool X is more effective way to communicate by just using it yourself.

Agree with your point, and email does succeed here just because it's ubiquitous. You don't need to check do you what whatsapp? Telegram? Oh I don't use this or that because of privacy, etc.

Email give you a FREEDOM to use anything you want with it because it was developed at times when data farming wasn't the main goal for big tech.

That's why in most cases we just ask for email address.

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

#166

Post by mjgs »

netheril96 wrote: post #155
mjgs wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your points are even more valid when you start to move to different counties. You quickly realise that people in other countries often don’t use the apps you are using, in fact you most likely won’t have heard of the apps they are using. But “everyone is using X” they will tell you, but you’ll have no way to know for sure. Are you really going to install every piece of software people say to install? At least with em…

> At least with email, it just works and there are minimal security issues, and it’s an open protocol etc etc, even if it’s a bit old fashioned. Here in China, most people only use email at work.

In the countries I’ve been, people use all sorts of apps and each person is very shocked when you don’t have “the app” that everyone is using. And of course the fashions change over time, so app X is popular for a few years, then it’s app Y. It’s impossible to keep up with all these trends.

Mostly people are able to email, even if it’s a bit unusual, and perhaps, like you say, mostly a work thing.

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

#167

Post by MereInterest »

ryandrake wrote: post #83
babypuncher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine to want all your communication on an open protocol, but email is just plain clunky and not good at all for the types of online communication people have grown accustomed to. It literally is just an electronic equivalent of sending a letter, and inherits most of the limitations that implies. If any of us are ever going to convince friends and family to leave proprietary platforms like Messenger and Discord,…

> If any of us are ever going to convince friends and family to leave proprietary platforms I’ve kind of thrown in the towel on this fight. People are going to use what they like. For me, it’s E-mail. My friends and family know how to get in touch with me if they need to: using E-mail. If they want to text each other or WhatsApp each other or Snapchat each other or whatever it is they do, they can go right ahead: it…

> If they want to text each other or WhatsApp each other or Snapchat each other or whatever it is they do, they can go right ahead: it doesn’t affect me.

So when Facebook slurps up your email address by virtue of your friends using WhatsApp, that doesn't affect you?

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

#169

Post by PostThisTooFast »

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."

That doesn't make any sense. E-mail doesn't need to "keep up." It serves a different purpose from IMs. If it didn't, it would be the same thing and therefore truly pointless.

Think it through.

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

#170

Post by jesterson »

Absolutely agree with the author.

There is simply no alternative for information exchange which is so ubiquitous, not locking you to specific vendor who loves to do data farming on you. Extremely reliable and flexible.

For years there have been different projects claiming to be "email kiilers", however email is still there and most of those projects have been long forgotten.

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