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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

#31

Post by gsich »

peterpost2 wrote: post #11
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.

You really can't run your on email server nowadays though, you need to have been running one for several decades otherwise the email common email providers(gmail, outlook) will automatically just assume its spam. Also due to the way extensions added to the email protocol configuring and learning how to properly configure it so it gets accepted will be a dayjob.

You still can. The main and most important thing is to have a clean IP. So no major cloud provider who reuse IPs.

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

#32

Post by sneak »

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…

All the "evolution" is is getting you to use bespoke rich clients for email-like store-and-forward systems (fb messenger, instagram dm, et c) that show you ads that you can't configure and can't replace.

If "email" simply means "gmail.com" to you then it's natural to assume that you'd think it hasn't evolved.

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

#33

Post by nly »

tkzed49 wrote: post #17
ihattendorf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perhaps 4-6 false positives in the spam folder a month That's 4-6 valid messages a month the average user will never see.

I disagree, I think "check your spam" is fairly widely understood.

Who has time for that when your spam folder is full of hundreds of junk messages per day?

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

#34

Post by babypuncher »

daveslash wrote: post #7
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…

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.

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, we are going to need an open protocol that allows for the same features and level of polish. Trying to get everyone to just use email is a complete non-starter.

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

#35

Post by edoceo »

peterpost2 wrote: post #11
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.

You really can't run your on email server nowadays though, you need to have been running one for several decades otherwise the email common email providers(gmail, outlook) will automatically just assume its spam. Also due to the way extensions added to the email protocol configuring and learning how to properly configure it so it gets accepted will be a dayjob.

I just switched my long running SMTP to a new IP. I've got SPF, DKIM and DMARC all dialed in. I'm not getting tagged as spam. Even when I add new domains to this host for sending - still gets through to G, Y and MS based services.

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

#36

Post by anomaloustho »

sneak wrote: post #30
dvt wrote: post #5

I don't think this kind of Luddism is useful. It's purported by the same kinds of people that, upon seeing a new SaaS, quickly retort: "couldn't you just do that with Google Docs/Word/pen and paper?" Not to mention that email absolutely sucks . The confusing threads, the forwarding, the constant CC'ing, someone making it or not making it into a list, the spam. It's absolute garbage. In fact, people have been seeking…

> Not to mention that email absolutely sucks. The confusing threads, the forwarding, the constant CC'ing, someone making it or not making it into a list, the spam. It's absolute garbage. This says to me that you have bad tools for email, not that the protocol or concept sucks. If you use email like a rube, it is expected to be absolute garbage. The same goes for Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, though: you have to chan…

I’d be interested to hear what good email tools look like if you have a chance to post some examples.

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

#38

Post by sneak »

saimiam wrote: post #28
adamretter wrote: post #8

I love this idea - I am so totally uninterested when yet another forum/IM solution is suggested to me. email works and (most) everyone has it. The last thing I want to do is install yet another client app or sign-up to some online website app. Enough already!

> (most) everyone Email is hardly a thing in India for general use. One of my interns hates email so much that he built a bot which IMs him the contents of his email to Telegram.

The fact that email is interoperable is what makes this possible. Try building a bot to forward your Facebook Messenger messages to $OTHER_PLATFORM.

(Aside: if they are okay getting a push notification per email, I suggest that they are Doing It Wrong. Email serves a different purpose entirely.)

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

#39

Post by edoceo »

inter_netuser wrote: post #19
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…

read-receipt isnt handled well by gmail?

Read receipt isn't handled well by my mail server either. Its not a good feature anyway

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

#40

Post by sneak »

anomaloustho wrote: post #36
sneak wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to mention that email absolutely sucks. The confusing threads, the forwarding, the constant CC'ing, someone making it or not making it into a list, the spam. It's absolute garbage. This says to me that you have bad tools for email, not that the protocol or concept sucks. If you use email like a rube, it is expected to be absolute garbage. The same goes for Facebook or Twitter or Reddit, though: you have to chan…

I’d be interested to hear what good email tools look like if you have a chance to post some examples.

The good ones are fairly technical, but there are services that make them easier. Sieve or procmail filters and clients like macOS Mail.app and mutt are good ones.

My main email client is macOS Mail.app and it's pretty great when configured properly in conjunction with serverside preprocessing/filtering.

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