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I've been panned on here before for saying this, but I really feel everyone should leave email alone. As a spec its already so immensely complicated and embedde

by math0ne 10y ago

I've been panned on here before for saying this, but I really feel everyone should leave email alone. As a spec its already so immensely complicated and embedded that any features you add will only be picked up by a tiny percentage of providers.

tempestn 10y ago
Imagine if that advice had been taken pre-gmail though. Not everyone loves it, but for most people, gmail's conversation view is far superior to the default way emails were organized before. And it does this while still interacting seamlessly with other email clients. I don't see gmail as perfect, but that's kind of the point; it's possible we could gain from this kind of experimentation. Afterthought - archiving and snoozing emails are also concepts that weren't around initially, but can be extremely valuable depending on your workflow. I'm sure there are other similar improvements and additions to be found.
- abraae 10y ago
  Archiving emails was a true game changer. I often email documents to myself for future reference, even though I'm also uploading them to jira, or a wiki, or a shared drive or whatever. The one place I know I can always search all the way back is Gmail.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    Archiving has always been possible via folders and IMAP. What makes it valuable was the gigabytes of storage space and decent webmail client.
- vidarh 10y ago
  I've come to dislike it more and more. Gmail hides too many details. Thinks like precise timestamps. Things like not surfacing subject changes well enough. Things like a spam filter with immense amounts of false positives. I keep having to fight with gmail in ways I never have to with other mail solutions, to the point were I'm getting very close to abandoning it entirely.
  - tempestn 10y ago
    I agree with you on the spam filtering. It would be VERY nice if you could customize the threshold, or even better, have a couple of thresholds, so you end up with a 'definitely spam' and a 'probably spam' box. I've kind of created that by using spamassassin to filter out really hardcore spam before it gets to gmail, but obviously that's not an option if you're using an @gmail address. That said, I think we take for granted just how good gmail's spam filtering is. Their ability to 'see' so much email passing through the system gives them a massive advantage there, which they've used to pretty good effect. They catch a ton of stuff for me that SA misses, and very few false positives (but just enough that I can't ignore the folder, unfortunately).
    - vidarh 10y ago
      Unfortunately the false positives vary greatly with your mail patterns. For me the amount large enough that even though it also stops a shitload of spam I'm starting to think it's too much of a problem. Just checked right now, and though I've checked my spam folder earlier this month (and emptied the folder), it now has 40 messages of which 9 are false positives. What's more, several of them are from senders I regularly get e-mail from and that I have never marked as spam.
      - tempestn 10y ago
        Ha, lucky you. Before I started pre-filtering with SA, I got about 3000 spam emails per month. I can cut out about 2/3 of those with SA without losing any of the false positives, so now I only have to wade through 1000 or so to find the one or two falses. :/
        vidarh 10y ago
        That brutal, but if my false positive rate was that low I'd probably be willing to just tolerate it. What drives me most crazy, is just how hard it is to get Gmail to accept that a given type of e-mail is not spam...
- zeveb 10y ago
  > Not everyone loves it, but for most people, gmail's conversation view is far superior to the default way emails were organized before. Before gmail, I used gnus (http://www.gnus.org/ http://www.gnus.org/) to read my email, and frankly the two methods seem pretty on-par (in fact, for over a decade I used gnus to read gmail). The only reason I do use gmail (actually, Inbox) today is because I want to read & send email from my phone, and it's convenient to use the same interface both places. Honestly, I'm a bit tempted to switch to K9 on the phone & gnus on my computer again. Gnus is orders of magnitudes faster than Inbox or the Gmail web UI.

by math0ne 10y ago

tempestn 10y ago

Imagine if that advice had been taken pre-gmail though. Not everyone loves it, but for most people, gmail's conversation view is far superior to the default way emails were organized before. And it does this while still interacting seamlessly with other email clients. I don't see gmail as perfect, but that's kind of the point; it's possible we could gain from this kind of experimentation. Afterthought - archiving and snoozing emails are also concepts that weren't around initially, but can be extremely valuable depending on your workflow. I'm sure there are other similar improvements and additions to be found.

abraae 10y ago
Archiving emails was a true game changer. I often email documents to myself for future reference, even though I'm also uploading them to jira, or a wiki, or a shared drive or whatever. The one place I know I can always search all the way back is Gmail.
- falcolas 10y ago
  Archiving has always been possible via folders and IMAP. What makes it valuable was the gigabytes of storage space and decent webmail client.
vidarh 10y ago
I've come to dislike it more and more. Gmail hides too many details. Thinks like precise timestamps. Things like not surfacing subject changes well enough. Things like a spam filter with immense amounts of false positives. I keep having to fight with gmail in ways I never have to with other mail solutions, to the point were I'm getting very close to abandoning it entirely.
- tempestn 10y ago
  I agree with you on the spam filtering. It would be VERY nice if you could customize the threshold, or even better, have a couple of thresholds, so you end up with a 'definitely spam' and a 'probably spam' box. I've kind of created that by using spamassassin to filter out really hardcore spam before it gets to gmail, but obviously that's not an option if you're using an @gmail address. That said, I think we take for granted just how good gmail's spam filtering is. Their ability to 'see' so much email passing through the system gives them a massive advantage there, which they've used to pretty good effect. They catch a ton of stuff for me that SA misses, and very few false positives (but just enough that I can't ignore the folder, unfortunately).
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Unfortunately the false positives vary greatly with your mail patterns. For me the amount large enough that even though it also stops a shitload of spam I'm starting to think it's too much of a problem. Just checked right now, and though I've checked my spam folder earlier this month (and emptied the folder), it now has 40 messages of which 9 are false positives. What's more, several of them are from senders I regularly get e-mail from and that I have never marked as spam.
    - tempestn 10y ago
      Ha, lucky you. Before I started pre-filtering with SA, I got about 3000 spam emails per month. I can cut out about 2/3 of those with SA without losing any of the false positives, so now I only have to wade through 1000 or so to find the one or two falses. :/
      - vidarh 10y ago
        That brutal, but if my false positive rate was that low I'd probably be willing to just tolerate it. What drives me most crazy, is just how hard it is to get Gmail to accept that a given type of e-mail is not spam...
zeveb 10y ago
> Not everyone loves it, but for most people, gmail's conversation view is far superior to the default way emails were organized before. Before gmail, I used gnus (http://www.gnus.org/ http://www.gnus.org/) to read my email, and frankly the two methods seem pretty on-par (in fact, for over a decade I used gnus to read gmail). The only reason I do use gmail (actually, Inbox) today is because I want to read & send email from my phone, and it's convenient to use the same interface both places. Honestly, I'm a bit tempted to switch to K9 on the phone & gnus on my computer again. Gnus is orders of magnitudes faster than Inbox or the Gmail web UI.