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Author here: I understand your point, but I disagree that Gmail’s reasons are good reasons. Partly this is a difference in philosophy I suspect; we should all t

Author here: I understand your point, but I disagree that Gmail’s reasons are good reasons. Partly this is a difference in philosophy I suspect; we should all try to help each other to become better, and Gmail’s pandering to users’ poor habits just enables them to avoid gaining understanding that would help them in the long run. Another reason is that the Gmail type of threading simply doesn’t work in practice, especially when the conversation has more than three participants. I know this because of the way people try to find a “better” way by moving away from email, when a good portion of their frustration is due to the difficulty in following conversations, specifically because they are using Gmail. They have no idea that email already offers them what they need, because they’ve never used an actual email client.

jiveturkey 6y ago
Thank you for chiming in. I take your point, very well. But a fundamental disagreement we have is your generous opinion of the 90 %ile user's ability and desire to become an email expert. The loss of that battle was recognized in September 1993. gmail didn't relinquish its duty to educate users as it became popular; it became popular (in part) because it did things in a simpler way, that users didn't have to "learn" how to use. The vast majority of folks do not care about such trivialities as following a thread. It requires forethought that they do not want to invest. You have to meet users where they are at. One can wish for better users, sure. That's not a winning strategy. As well, I still maintain it's unfair to pick on gmail. They had to follow Outlook. Outlook willfully broke threads for other MUAs by not including In-Reply-To headers. That was just evil. At least gmail generates In-Reply-To and References headers! Which Outlook drops. Outlook should be the bogeyman for your article, not gmail!
- leephillips 6y ago
  You are absolutely correct that Gmail followed a winning strategy; they’ve won, after all. The same is true of Facebook. From the point of view of corporate success, they are doing the right things. My point is just that these are not good things, in the larger sense. Thank you for informing me about the role of Outlook in this. I used Gmail as my example because it seems to be taking over, at least for “normies”, as you call them. So the average person’s idea of what email is comes from experience with Gmail. It’s possible I’m underestimating the importance or prevalence of Outlook, as I deal less with corporate types than academic and publishing types.

jiveturkey 6y ago

Thank you for chiming in. I take your point, very well. But a fundamental disagreement we have is your generous opinion of the 90 %ile user's ability and desire to become an email expert. The loss of that battle was recognized in September 1993. gmail didn't relinquish its duty to educate users as it became popular; it became popular (in part) because it did things in a simpler way, that users didn't have to "learn" how to use. The vast majority of folks do not care about such trivialities as following a thread. It requires forethought that they do not want to invest. You have to meet users where they are at. One can wish for better users, sure. That's not a winning strategy. As well, I still maintain it's unfair to pick on gmail. They had to follow Outlook. Outlook willfully broke threads for other MUAs by not including In-Reply-To headers. That was just evil. At least gmail generates In-Reply-To and References headers! Which Outlook drops. Outlook should be the bogeyman for your article, not gmail!

leephillips 6y ago
You are absolutely correct that Gmail followed a winning strategy; they’ve won, after all. The same is true of Facebook. From the point of view of corporate success, they are doing the right things. My point is just that these are not good things, in the larger sense. Thank you for informing me about the role of Outlook in this. I used Gmail as my example because it seems to be taking over, at least for “normies”, as you call them. So the average person’s idea of what email is comes from experience with Gmail. It’s possible I’m underestimating the importance or prevalence of Outlook, as I deal less with corporate types than academic and publishing types.