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Perhaps, but it's hard to say. False positives are much more harmful than false negatives. I have peronally had Gmail flag a number of legit emails as spam, and

by rurp 3y ago

Perhaps, but it's hard to say. False positives are much more harmful than false negatives. I have peronally had Gmail flag a number of legit emails as spam, and those are just the ones I know about! It's almost certain that I have lost valuable messages because I didn't check the spam folder in time. These aren't transactional emails either, I'm talking about messages from real people that I know personally. I would be willing to wade through a number of additional spam emails to avoid losing important ones but of course this is Google so there is no user facing dial to adjust the sensitivity. Users just have to trust that Google's generalized approach is well calibrated for them.

solardev 3y ago
I'd take the false positives, personally. If someone really needs to reach me and doesn't get to me on the first try, they usually just email or text back and go "Hey, did you get my email?". Or, just quickly skim through the spam folder once a week.
- jghn 3y ago
  Unless they always get filtered. Which has happened to me before where people wondered why I was ghosting them. I now skim my spam filter regularly because of this, but not everyone realizes they should do this.
  - solardev 3y ago
    > Which has happened to me before where people wondered why I was ghosting them. Same, but I feel like it's almost kinda socially acceptable now. Happens to everyone and it's not something to get upset about... "oh, it wasn't me, it just went to spam." Like Gmail managed to alter our public norms instead of ensuring a zero false-positive rate :)
- rurp 3y ago
  Sometimes people will reach out again, but that doesn't cover all cases. If an old friend/acquaintance/relative who I don't regularly talk to reaches out and I miss the email they will probably assume I blew them off. Scenarios like they will be in the area and asking if I want to meet up, or maybe sharing something notable that happened to come up. It sounds like a lot of people here check their spam folder regularly, which is good, but I don't know how widespread that is. I remember Gmail early on deemphasizing the spam folder since, in their view, the filtering was so good people didn't need to check it.
ahoka 3y ago
Most people I know regularly read their spam folders… which kinda defeats the purpose.
- solardev 3y ago
  It's still faster than manually marking hundreds of spam though. In the spam folder I just scroll down the list as fast as I can skim, and then close the tab if there's nothing. If they were all just in my inbox I'd have to manually mark each one (and risk accidentally doing it to a real message while going through hundreds of messages). There's no perfect solution here. Just personal preferences. I think I'd prefer a clean inbox with a 1% false positive rate vs having to manually flag a bunch of missed spam all the time.

by rurp 3y ago

solardev 3y ago

I'd take the false positives, personally. If someone really needs to reach me and doesn't get to me on the first try, they usually just email or text back and go "Hey, did you get my email?". Or, just quickly skim through the spam folder once a week.

jghn 3y ago
Unless they always get filtered. Which has happened to me before where people wondered why I was ghosting them. I now skim my spam filter regularly because of this, but not everyone realizes they should do this.
- solardev 3y ago
  > Which has happened to me before where people wondered why I was ghosting them. Same, but I feel like it's almost kinda socially acceptable now. Happens to everyone and it's not something to get upset about... "oh, it wasn't me, it just went to spam." Like Gmail managed to alter our public norms instead of ensuring a zero false-positive rate :)
rurp 3y ago
Sometimes people will reach out again, but that doesn't cover all cases. If an old friend/acquaintance/relative who I don't regularly talk to reaches out and I miss the email they will probably assume I blew them off. Scenarios like they will be in the area and asking if I want to meet up, or maybe sharing something notable that happened to come up. It sounds like a lot of people here check their spam folder regularly, which is good, but I don't know how widespread that is. I remember Gmail early on deemphasizing the spam folder since, in their view, the filtering was so good people didn't need to check it.

ahoka 3y ago

Most people I know regularly read their spam folders… which kinda defeats the purpose.

solardev 3y ago
It's still faster than manually marking hundreds of spam though. In the spam folder I just scroll down the list as fast as I can skim, and then close the tab if there's nothing. If they were all just in my inbox I'd have to manually mark each one (and risk accidentally doing it to a real message while going through hundreds of messages). There's no perfect solution here. Just personal preferences. I think I'd prefer a clean inbox with a 1% false positive rate vs having to manually flag a bunch of missed spam all the time.