Comments on: Email Doesn’t Scale

By: Niyaz

Niyaz — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:48:20 +0000

I think thinking of it based on sheer numbers is the problem.
Some points:
(1) Sort your email based on the sender
(2) Senders you personally know are high priority
(3) Respond to others based on the sentenc.es rule.
(4) All this is a consequence of popularity and power. Adjust with that.

By: David Shirey

David Shirey — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:59:19 +0000

The problem is that email should not be thought of as a universal communication solution. That is, it doesn’t work well in all situations. Email is good if you need a yes or no type answer, and there will be no discussion. If you have something complicated and you need discussion, all of a sudden you have 20 emails, each one sentence long, that consumes an hour of your time. Sometimes you need the give and take of a personal conversation. The problem with that? No body answers their stinkin’ phone anymore. And that is what has forced everyone to rely on email. At least with email you have an date/time stamped audit trail to prove you tried to resolve the issue. The real solution? Stop doing or being involved with complicated things. Just keep repeating ‘Simple is better’.

By: Dan Rubin

Dan Rubin — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 21:02:51 +0000

@Mike D: Thx, I’m happier with this theme than any I’ve designed before.

By: Sarven Capadisli

Sarven Capadisli — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:20:54 +0000

When all these attachments and replies are flying around it just creates chaos out of nothing.

Wiki+IRC is one way of going at it which I think covers 80% of the communication needs.

I’ve written about IRC as a social platform here: http://www.csarven.ca/irc-social-network

By: Matt Robin

Matt Robin — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:07:20 +0000

Mike: Dan’s blog design is like so super-wicked-cool. Especially the use of orange.

;)

Dan: I must admit, I don’t exactly get swamped with e-mails…so it is hard for me to consider e-mails being a particularly bad way to communicate. E-mail Servers…yes, those are bastards(!) but e-mails aren’t too bad. The bloated content only appears to stem from some people not knowing how to write well in e-mails, or, like me - just end up rambling on for too long.

I use Gmail/Googlemail for my main web-related e-mails, and I must admit that having the Gmail Search facility (for example, if I wanted to find all e-mails in my Inbox that had the words ‘superfluous banter’) it is no problem at all, even with bloated text in the e-mails themselves. My spam filters are working ok too, and I use a different e-mail address for signing up to any sites where I suspect I might get any spam sent to me (which keeps it out of my Gmail account most of the time). I think e-mail is fine if it is used appropriately.

I think that’s all I need to say on that for now - I ran in to some bitter controversy months ago with my less than favourable comments about the ‘E-mail Standards Project’, so I’ve been wary to express an opinion about e-mail related matters since then.

By: Mike D.

Mike D. — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:14:02 +0000

I love your blog. Did you design this yourself? It rawks.