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We need to update email protocol to help reduce information overload

1 pointsby mofosyneover 7 years ago
If you notice about receiving notifications in your phone from apps or from services like twitter, it is often seen as a stream of notifications. Missing some will not cause problems.<p>However this is not the case for emails. Thus if left unattended can lead to information overload.<p>Don&#x27;t you think we need to update email to make it more human friendly from an information overload perspective?<p>Here is some potential ideas:<p>- Metadata by responsible sender to suggest when to self delete if required.<p>- Metadata by responsible sender to suggest visual priority. e.g. show a notification in notification bar, but without alerting user.<p>- Metadata for allowing sender to assign tags&#x2F;categories. You can then use tags to adjust priority of different types of emails. There is a regular tags defined by the email standard, and a flexible tags which are utf-8 strings that are not covered under the standard.<p>Obviously this is based on how responsible the sender is, but if they are not responsible you can always press the spam button.<p>(side note: Should email also be extended to allow for subscription? e.g. like twitter).<p>So what&#x27;s your idea? And how do we push for these changes?

2 comments

greenyodaover 7 years ago
&gt; Metadata by responsible sender to suggest when to self delete if required.<p>Sorry, I may need to archive your e-mail for legal reasons (or maybe just for reasons of corporate politics). So I prefer to decide myself when to delete it.<p>&gt; Metadata by responsible sender to suggest visual priority.<p>Sorry, but something that seems &quot;urgent&quot; to you may not be at all important to me.<p>&gt; Metadata for allowing sender to assign tags&#x2F;categories.<p>Sorry, but I have my own tags and categories that you know nothing about.
PaulHouleover 7 years ago
Some extension of this could help: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;gmail&#x2F;markup&#x2F;reference&#x2F;formats&#x2F;json-ld" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.google.com&#x2F;gmail&#x2F;markup&#x2F;reference&#x2F;formats...</a>