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"the rarity with which users feel the need to check their spam box for false positives demonstrates a high precision of classification" I find this a curious c
by pwpwp 16y ago
"the rarity with which users feel the need to check their spam box for false positives demonstrates a high precision of classification"
I find this a curious claim. How does people not checking their spam boxes demonstrate that there are, in fact, few false positives?
- mike-cardwell 16y agoIf there were lots of false positives, people would check their spam folder a lot more. They'd expect to see non-spam email in there.
- pwpwp 16y agoNo. Missing emails from friends and acquaintances would get noticed (and therefore people would look in their spam boxes). Missing emails from strangers could be disappearing regularly without anyone noticing.
- mike-cardwell 16y agoPeople look in their spam folder. They see an email which shouldn't have been in there. They thus increase their frequency of checking. That is what Google is claiming, and what I am agreeing with them about.
- qjz 16y agoPeople look in their spam folder. Are you sure? I'd be willing to bet that the majority of users either don't know the spam folder exists or trust it to be a one-way black hole dustbin they never feel compelled to dig around in. False positives are more likely to be discovered when reported by the sender directly to the recipient via other means than email. Even then, I'd be surprised if half of them followed up by trying to locate the message in the spam folder. Frequency of checking seems like an unreliable metric when most users live in the INBOX, especially when Google virtually organizes the messages into "conversations" for them.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- patio11 16y agoIf there were lots of false positives, people would check their spam folder a lot more. People can't find things not on the default screen when a) they want to use them and b) I tell them exactly what to click to get there. I think you can explain most of "Nobody checks spam" with "The most common email usage pattern is Inbox and Doesn't Exist."