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GMail Introduces Priority Inbox
jason-za writes with this quote from a Google announcement:
"People tell us all that time that they're getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it all. We know what you mean — here at Google we run on email. Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day — mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that's often not important. It's time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Today, we're happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta) — an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail."
Priority Post (beta)
I keep thinking back to our good friend Xibit when I read this article. Yo Dawg, I know you like Gmail, so I got you an inbox for your inbox, so you can read mail while you read mail.
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
Based on his website he doesn't sound like a Gmail engineer but more of a "MSc student in Computer Science at the University of Cape Town where [he does] research how to scale fuzzy crowds on the GPU with CUDA."
I feel like it's possible that Doug Aberdeen, Software Engineer for Google, wrote that, or someone who represents Doug Aberdeen. It's more likely jason-za just copied and pasted that.
I really hate writing such snide remarks but come on slashdot editors, how long would it have taken to correctly attribute this stuff...
So now only emails meeting a certain priority will make it to the top of the list. How long until people figure out how to make their emails have higher priority and start abusing that power, leading the same problem Google just solved? Better to rely on a combination of filters to sort your mail for you as it comes in than try to trust some automated system (that can be gamed by others) to do it for you.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
There's a lot of crap that I used to think was important, or thought I'd be interested in... But the messages just piled up.
One day i just started deleting. I think I removed 7,000 'conversations' from my gmail inbox in an hour. Now I'm much better about deleting crap emails (without opening them) instead of letting them languish...
This 'priority inbox' will be interesting... Glad they're thinking about the problem - too bad it won't unsubscribe you from lists automatically. :)
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
It would also be a good thing to put a 1-line summary of the email, followed up with a Details section.
Isn't that what the subject line and message body are supposed to be for?
I appreciate that Google is trying to idiot-proof email but it'd probably be a simpler task to train people using almost your exact phrasing: the subject line is a one line summary of the email and the body is the details section.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
This is intriguing, but it just seems to add yet another layer. Is it really needed? By leveraging Filters and Labels, you can automatically categorize email to whatever you want.
I also use the "Multiple Inboxes" Labs add-on that gives me a second "inbox" that is defined to display only "starred" items. no matter where the message is (in the inbox of archived with a label) I can always see those which I classify as "important." And by using Filters, this gets done automatically for many messages.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Only the one in my bathroom.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I thought that's what filters were for. Gmail is getting a bit cluttered with features. The elegance of it was always one of the big wins for me. I'd rather have one simple, configurable feature that allows met do many things than a hundred buttons on my screen. Filters and tags already pretty much covered this.
Only the one in my bathroom.
Ah, you're a TiSP subscriber too eh? ;)
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
I just wish to hell they would allow users to turn off the threaded conversations. Google has been acting like a smarty-pants little child holding their breath on this one. Finding items around by date (especially when you only know the approximate date) would be so much easier if the just put their big boy pants on and enabled this.
> ...it'd probably be a simpler task to train people...
No. Training people is a hopeless task.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Ideally, a mail client should track how often someone uses the 'high importance' flag. Someone where I used to work used it for every single mail that she sent to mailing lists, and they were never important. In contrast, my editor only uses it for stuff that I actually need to read and respond to urgently, maybe 1% of emails I get from him. A mail client could easily learn that the first person always abuses the flag, while the second person uses it appropriately, and only flag emails from him.
It could also easily learn which senders always get immediate replies, while others get replies after a few days. Presumably the Google system is using the same sort of learning algorithms that they use for spam, but with this kind of thing as input rather.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I appreciate that Google is trying to idiot-proof email but it'd probably be a simpler task to train people...
Are you serious? I'd take a complex sort algorithm over trusting the people who email me in a heartbeat! I've been begging a client of mine to stop marking his emails urgent for half a decade. Give it up man! Flagging your emails and using a lot of exclamation marks does not make you important!
Most people are idiots about email. Two of my favorite people in the world are brilliant in so many ways, but they're idiots about email.
One of these people doesn't know how to use an address book or type in an email address unless absolutely necessary, so all emails she sends are responses to old emails. So if I want to find an email that she sent last week, it might be in a thread that started in 2006. Or 2008. She's not consistent about which ones she responds to.
The other one always puts "Hey Ben" in the subject. Doesn't matter what it's about; the subject is always, "Hey Ben". even when I change the subject line on response, he'll change it right back to "Hey Ben" when it's his turn.
I've tried to explain the benefits of good subjects to both of them, but they give me that 10,000 mile stare like I'm speaking Klingon or something.
The CB App. What's your 20?
I've been using this for about 6 months and it's very useful. Mail from people I read and reply to more often usually percolate to the top. Sometimes unimportant mail are marked as "important" but I can downgrade them. Just keep an eye on the "Everything else" pile once in a while, sometimes important mail are mislabeled.
I've tried to explain the benefits of good subjects to both of them, but they give me that 10,000 mile stare like I'm speaking Klingon or something.
That sounds like a candidate for a suitable (fake) "bounce" message. Maybe something like this...
"Attention Will Robinson! Your email has been intercepted by a lameness filter. Please try supplying an apposite subject line."
don't get all self righteous, gmail has had filters forever.
the priority inbox is like the opposite of spam filtering. that is to say, it works AUTOMATICALLY. some people can't be assed to set up rules and filters and such, but this will do all the work for them.
so yes, it IS pretty amazing new technology. smartass.
But what would be really useful is a snooze button for emails that would archive them for a few days (or whatever time you specify for that email) and then have it pop up in your inbox as if new after that.