> 1) Email suffers from the tragedy of the commons. The more email that is sent the less valuable each email app is.
I'm not sure it's so much the tragedy of the commons, as it is "any fool can mash some text and whatever random markup he thinks works down the pipe and call it email". With proper use of headers (and x-headers) most setups can handle mail just fine (filter on delivery with sieve or similar).
> 2) Current email tools are woefully inadequate to deal with the existing volume of email users receive.
I've yet to see anyone roll out proper server based filtering that truly enables the "regular" user to do what "power users" already can do easily. I think sieve coupled with imap and server-side search holds great promise, but I don't know of any clients that actually make good use of this.
The alternative approach of indexing for fast search/filter on the client only really works for a single client (eg: "hosted" mail, either webmail, only reading email on a single computer (eg: laptop) or reading email over ssh).
I suppose we need a standard way of a) syncing email (like imap), b) syncing filters (like sieve) and c) syncing indexes and search/view/tag preferences. I'm not aware of anything that fills c).
> Worst is the fact that email forces users into a LIFO queue and doesn't allow for import-based ordering.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are there clients that don't allow reverse sorting by message date? That sounds like a broken client. That people don't use the feature is another matter...
> We need innovation in email processing more than we need more email based applications.
Looking at the design of MH [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System ], and sup/notmuch -- it would seem we should've come much further than we have. As a vim-user I quietly resent the cult of Emacs for probably having a "good enough" email system, and therefore no longer contributing improvement for "the rest of us" ;-)
> (Even SMS has a better model for organizing data than modern email: one thread per counter party group.)
>> Worst is the fact that email forces users into a LIFO queue and doesn't allow for import-based ordering.
> I'm not sure what you mean here. Are there clients that don't allow reverse sorting by message date? That sounds like a broken client. That people don't use the feature is another matter...
LIFO and FIFO are the only real sorting options. I want drag and drop of "this is top priority, this is second, this is third" that doesn't get pushed down when new mail comes in. Email is used as a processing queue, but at the volume most of us receive advanced ordering is desirable but impossible -- I want to look at my email and see the top five things I have to do then the new messages not vice versa.
Email as a consumer is currently "OK" but I'd like to see it upgraded to "good."
You can at least get some of that with flags/stars, but I agree, most clients won't allow persistent sorting, and for some use-cases that could be useful.
I'm not sure it's so much the tragedy of the commons, as it is "any fool can mash some text and whatever random markup he thinks works down the pipe and call it email". With proper use of headers (and x-headers) most setups can handle mail just fine (filter on delivery with sieve or similar).
> 2) Current email tools are woefully inadequate to deal with the existing volume of email users receive.
I've yet to see anyone roll out proper server based filtering that truly enables the "regular" user to do what "power users" already can do easily. I think sieve coupled with imap and server-side search holds great promise, but I don't know of any clients that actually make good use of this.
The alternative approach of indexing for fast search/filter on the client only really works for a single client (eg: "hosted" mail, either webmail, only reading email on a single computer (eg: laptop) or reading email over ssh).
I suppose we need a standard way of a) syncing email (like imap), b) syncing filters (like sieve) and c) syncing indexes and search/view/tag preferences. I'm not aware of anything that fills c).
> Worst is the fact that email forces users into a LIFO queue and doesn't allow for import-based ordering.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Are there clients that don't allow reverse sorting by message date? That sounds like a broken client. That people don't use the feature is another matter...
> We need innovation in email processing more than we need more email based applications.
Looking at the design of MH [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH_Message_Handling_System ], and sup/notmuch -- it would seem we should've come much further than we have. As a vim-user I quietly resent the cult of Emacs for probably having a "good enough" email system, and therefore no longer contributing improvement for "the rest of us" ;-)
> (Even SMS has a better model for organizing data than modern email: one thread per counter party group.)
Most clients allow sorting by thread ( http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html ) or grouping by participants?
Now, if you want to argue that the state of email readers on Android is atrocious, I'll agree without further comment.