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Folders vs. Tags For Shared Email Accounts?

Posted by timothy on from the complexity-starts-small dept.

binarybum writes "I run a student organization with a 10-member 'board of directors.' We hardly ever all have time to attend meetings and a large part of how we interact with the student body is through email. We have a shared email account (accessible by the 10 of us on the board) right now that is typically accessed through an outlook web-access portal. We've been attempting to keep things organized in the account through a complex collection of folders that have been tacked on ad libum. It's turned into a complete mess. I have the onerous task of restructuring the folder system in hopes of achieving sustainable organization, but I'm wondering if I should just switch us over to a tagging system — perhaps Gmail. Has anyone used tags for a multi-user account successfully or does it end up being just as messy?"

8 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. why sare? by woodchip · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why don't you just send a copy of every email sent to that address to each of the 10 members individuals addresses, and let each of them sort it anyway they want.

    1. Re:why sare? by hyfe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why don't you just send a copy of every email sent to that address to each of the 10 members individuals addresses, and let each of them sort it anyway they want.
      That only works well under the presumption that everyone's able/bothered to work out their own filtering system... and that's one heck of a presumption :)

      If you're going to use tags, since you're a small group you're pretty much going to have to limit yourself to a set predefined ones.. and then the only difference between tags and folders is that a document can only have one folder, but several tags. If you're only 10 people I doubt you really need that finegrained a control, so folders should work just as well as tags.

      That said, what this essentially boils down to is the general answer to next to every bloody architectural question out there is; it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do it well. Seriously, what solution you choose is next to never important, it's how well you use that solution that matters.

      --
      "" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
  2. Re:Go with tags by nacturation · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Use both. Problem solved.

    --
    Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
  3. Re:Go with tags by djinnn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I tend to agree: using tags, you're not limited to disjoint sets.
    Intersections are quite common in real life, and designing the perfect category tree is not easy nor fast. Even when you succeed, you're always running the risk of being confronted with a new item that doesn't fit in your tree, or would need a complete tree redesign to fit in well (see biology).

    However, tag systems usually are "all-flat" (Gmail is anyway): there is no notion of sub-category.
    If you're going to have dozens of tags, this is going to be messy too...

  4. Re:Go with tags by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Tagging still requires everybody to have a consistent ontology (i.e. to want to use the same set of labels, and to interpret them consistently) which in practice they won't. I would choose something with a good search facility instead. Throw it all in a huge pile and just search it later.

    (Actually I agree with other posters who say this is just a normal application for an email list, let people do whatever they want, but the OP ruled that out?)

  5. Let's ask the stupid questions first... by Angostura · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... because the are always the most valuable.

    Currently, I'm completely unclear as to what kind of information you are attempting to organize here.

    You imply you communicate with each other via e-mail, you say you communicate with the student body via e-mail. Fine, so what exactly is the purpose of these myriad nested folders? What is the organizational problem you are trying to solve?

  6. Re:Go with tags by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It would make more sense to create a mailing list, and have emails sent to the list forwarded to all ten members. Then they could administer their folders as they see fit.

    With 10 people on one email account, it's hardly surprising that it turned into a clusterfuck.

    --
    -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  7. Lazy versus incompetent by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That only works well under the presumption that everyone's able/bothered to work out their own filtering system... I don't buy the "able" argument personally. That's just laziness to my mind. Which leaves "bothered" in your terminology. If someone can't be bothered to organize their own account I find it highly unlikely they will be bothered in a joint account.

    Personally I think joint accounts are normally a terrible idea. They are extremely difficult to maintain since (supposedly) everyone is responsible. In my experience if everyone is supposed to be responsible then in reality no one is actually responsible. Tragedy of the commons applies here. Everyone trusts someone else will deal with it and it becomes a big old mess.