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This is largely a technical problem resulting from Email's unpredictability and lack of any receipt verification mechanism. While this is true of other non-real
by necubi 15y ago
This is largely a technical problem resulting from Email's unpredictability and lack of any receipt verification mechanism. While this is true of other non-real time communication mediums (like snail mail), that doesn't mean we shouldn't try solving it.
Improved spam detection increases the likelihood that an email will actually reach its intended recipient. In the 7 years I've been using gmail I've seen exactly one false positive (although there is some bias here as I've long since stopped checking my spam folder). But such technology has been slow to filter out to the less technically inclined ISPs and mail providers.
As far as actual verification, there are several ways to achieve this now. A popular technique is embedding a 1x1 pixel image with a unique id in its url. Unfortunately this is frequently abused by spammers looking for verification that an email address is good, so many email readers block images by default.
Any real solution is going to require some sort of trust mechanism or better make the procedure opt-in. Still, anything would improve upon the current situation where letters go silently into the void
- ForrestN 15y agoWould you opt in? What if you don't have time to answer right now? I would hate feeling like I had to either respond immediately or broadcast that I was waiting. Part of the appeal of e-mail (or any correspondence) is that each correspondent can proceed at their own pace. It's a feature, not a bug, at least in many cases.
- a3_nm 15y agoThere is a difference between knowing that the message arrived in the recipient's inbox, and knowing that the recipient has opened the message. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_receipt#E-mail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_receipt#E-mail (DSN versus MDN). MDNs are not a very good idea, but widespread use of DSNs would probably be nice. There are quite a lot of cases where you just have to know if your message arrived, but it is tedious (and slightly rude) to ask for confirmation.
- jodrellblank 15y agoAny real solution is going to have to face the fact that it's easy to get a lot of email per day. Receipt acknowledgement doesn't seem like it would solve any real part of the (so called) problem.
- kaitnieks 15y agoLatvian Facebook clone has solved this by marking sent messages as read/unread. I think people use that system way more than e-mail here. Maybe there is going to be something that will replace e-mail worldwide in a similar way. Actually, I'm sure GMail could implement it right now if they wanted, for messages sent from and to GMail accounts.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- bilban 15y agoYou can always write a gentle second nudging email, if you are in that in need of a reply.
- uladzislau 15y agoWould a button "notify the sender that the message has been read" solve the problem? Sometimes you have no time for proper response or no wish to compose formal acknowledgement.