5 ms·

What ever happened to "there are no stupid users, only stupid websites/applications"? The user is not broken. Wanting email to be MORE than it is does not mean

by toast76 15y ago

What ever happened to "there are no stupid users, only stupid websites/applications"? The user is not broken. Wanting email to be MORE than it is does not mean users are wrong. The fact is that email does not do what the average user wants it to do. Telling people to change their habits is...well...stupid. Before anyone chimes in with "email isn't broken, but the clients may be". Whether this is a client issue or protocol issue is irrelevant. 99.9% of users do not know what SMTP is let alone why it is not broken. The email experience is broken. End of story. No blog post required.

nck4222 15y ago
I agree. If a technology is causing people to use it sub-optimally, then the technology should be improved.
- aethr 15y ago
  I disagree. The structure and/or implementation of email is not "causing people to use it sub-optimally". If you want to manage projects and tasks, there are very good tools available for accomplishing that goal. But don't expect all your clients to start using your management tool because you think it would be "optimal". Email is convenient and easy for them, and they don't have to learn a new system to use it. If you want to send files to other people, there are already specialized tools for that. Tools that have no size limits, that don't limit file extensions, etc. But don't expect all your clients to start using those tools unless they have a good reason to. Email is convenient and easy for them, and they don't have to learn a new system to send files with it. There are endless other workflows for email, most of which have a specialized alternative, an "improved" version of the underlying technology. When an individual gets tired of the inadequacies of a certain facet of email, they will find it and start using the alternative. Until that point, they will use email because it is "good enough". People actually are sub-optimal. I meant to start riding my bike to my new job, the money and health benefits would be optimal. But I'm not optimal, so I'm still taking the train. Until I find a compelling reason to start riding again, I'm going to keep taking the train because it's "good enough". That doesn't mean that the train system needs to be fixed. Frankly, I think the whole "let's fix email" debate is a complete non-starter, and the bevy of related blog posts popping up for the past two weeks is a whole lot of noise from people who haven't actually thought the complexities of "the problem" through, at all.
peterwoo 15y ago
What does the average user want it to do, that it doesn't? The big discussion lately has essentially come from people who DO know what SMTP is. And apart from "Gmail is slow", from what I've seen there's been a lot of complaining about mostly specialized use cases.
ljoshua 15y ago
Sorry, you missed the point. Occasionally the user is broken, because as human beings we sometimes do things that are less than optimal. I'm not making an argument really for whether or not this is a technology issue or a client/server problem, but more to say that we should try and have slightly more productive behaviors before we expect a technology solution to solve our woes (often self-inflicted).
- toast76 15y ago
  No, I didn't :) If this was an "occasional" problem, there wouldn't have been a dozen blog posts on HN about it in the last week (least of all this one). If humans are doing anything sub-optimally that's something technology can help improve. The more common the problem, the more likely there is a common solution. If everyone wants to use email as a todo list, you have two options: 1. tell everyone not to 2. build it Option 1 will not work.
  - 18pfsmt 15y ago
    I don't think many of us on HN want to use email as a ToDo list, but there are other people that we work for or with that tend to use email in this way. For example, my father is a fortune-500-exec-type (and an engineer), and he can't seem to grasp the idea of using a unique subject line (this led me to tell him, "don't email, just call"). There are also people that use the "email this article" function to share articles with you; I immediately delete such emails (I don't do html email), and let them know, but they persist. The issue reminds me of thread-jacking on forums leading to the idea that "forum software is broken." In other words, there are a myriad of poor choices being made by people that either cause security issues, or inefficiencies using email as a medium that is suboptimal.
  - aethr 15y ago
    Email is not "broken". Users are not "broken". Email is simply a method for people to communicate. People are messy. Put two of them together (communication) and the messiness increases exponentially. Have you ever seen two people arguing, and then it turns out (much later) they were arguing about two completely different things, and they are actually agreeing with each other? This isn't a technology problem, speech isn't "broken". Have you ever sent a text message, and the other person didn't respond for a few hours and you started to think that they were upset, or something you said was wrong etc. Then it turns out their phone was turned off or they were in a movie theatre. Everything was fine! Does this mean people are "broken"? The argument going on in this thread is far too black and white to apply to reality. People live in the grey area. Part of being human is managing the messiness of interacting with other people.
Iv 15y ago
There are stupid users. That is a fact. Your mantra is useful to try and make an idiot-proof application (and God knows how essential it is to capture a big market share) but sometimes a technology is a bit complex to use and some users who do not accept these constraints are just not fit to use it. For example, asymmetrical cryptography is not broken, it is hard to use and understand.

by toast76 15y ago

nck4222 15y ago

I agree. If a technology is causing people to use it sub-optimally, then the technology should be improved.

aethr 15y ago
I disagree. The structure and/or implementation of email is not "causing people to use it sub-optimally". If you want to manage projects and tasks, there are very good tools available for accomplishing that goal. But don't expect all your clients to start using your management tool because you think it would be "optimal". Email is convenient and easy for them, and they don't have to learn a new system to use it. If you want to send files to other people, there are already specialized tools for that. Tools that have no size limits, that don't limit file extensions, etc. But don't expect all your clients to start using those tools unless they have a good reason to. Email is convenient and easy for them, and they don't have to learn a new system to send files with it. There are endless other workflows for email, most of which have a specialized alternative, an "improved" version of the underlying technology. When an individual gets tired of the inadequacies of a certain facet of email, they will find it and start using the alternative. Until that point, they will use email because it is "good enough". People actually are sub-optimal. I meant to start riding my bike to my new job, the money and health benefits would be optimal. But I'm not optimal, so I'm still taking the train. Until I find a compelling reason to start riding again, I'm going to keep taking the train because it's "good enough". That doesn't mean that the train system needs to be fixed. Frankly, I think the whole "let's fix email" debate is a complete non-starter, and the bevy of related blog posts popping up for the past two weeks is a whole lot of noise from people who haven't actually thought the complexities of "the problem" through, at all.

peterwoo 15y ago

What does the average user want it to do, that it doesn't? The big discussion lately has essentially come from people who DO know what SMTP is. And apart from "Gmail is slow", from what I've seen there's been a lot of complaining about mostly specialized use cases.

ljoshua 15y ago

Sorry, you missed the point. Occasionally the user is broken, because as human beings we sometimes do things that are less than optimal. I'm not making an argument really for whether or not this is a technology issue or a client/server problem, but more to say that we should try and have slightly more productive behaviors before we expect a technology solution to solve our woes (often self-inflicted).

toast76 15y ago
No, I didn't :) If this was an "occasional" problem, there wouldn't have been a dozen blog posts on HN about it in the last week (least of all this one). If humans are doing anything sub-optimally that's something technology can help improve. The more common the problem, the more likely there is a common solution. If everyone wants to use email as a todo list, you have two options: 1. tell everyone not to 2. build it Option 1 will not work.
- 18pfsmt 15y ago
  I don't think many of us on HN want to use email as a ToDo list, but there are other people that we work for or with that tend to use email in this way. For example, my father is a fortune-500-exec-type (and an engineer), and he can't seem to grasp the idea of using a unique subject line (this led me to tell him, "don't email, just call"). There are also people that use the "email this article" function to share articles with you; I immediately delete such emails (I don't do html email), and let them know, but they persist. The issue reminds me of thread-jacking on forums leading to the idea that "forum software is broken." In other words, there are a myriad of poor choices being made by people that either cause security issues, or inefficiencies using email as a medium that is suboptimal.
- aethr 15y ago
  Email is not "broken". Users are not "broken". Email is simply a method for people to communicate. People are messy. Put two of them together (communication) and the messiness increases exponentially. Have you ever seen two people arguing, and then it turns out (much later) they were arguing about two completely different things, and they are actually agreeing with each other? This isn't a technology problem, speech isn't "broken". Have you ever sent a text message, and the other person didn't respond for a few hours and you started to think that they were upset, or something you said was wrong etc. Then it turns out their phone was turned off or they were in a movie theatre. Everything was fine! Does this mean people are "broken"? The argument going on in this thread is far too black and white to apply to reality. People live in the grey area. Part of being human is managing the messiness of interacting with other people.

Iv 15y ago

There are stupid users. That is a fact. Your mantra is useful to try and make an idiot-proof application (and God knows how essential it is to capture a big market share) but sometimes a technology is a bit complex to use and some users who do not accept these constraints are just not fit to use it. For example, asymmetrical cryptography is not broken, it is hard to use and understand.