Almost everyone I know who gets way too many emails and complains about 100s or 1000s of unreads has put themselves in that situation by signing up for everything. Spam is already handled well and there's just not that many sources of email if you take away newsletters and notifications.
That would only work for a while for me. 6 months later new stuff has crept in and I would have to go through another round of unsubscribing.
OK, but why wait for 6 months? Be proactive - you see something you don't want the either use unsubscribe or filter them out (if it comes from the same sender, but most of the time they give you unsubscribe link which just works…). One annoying thing with unsubscribing is that often they require you to go throu a couple of steps (including providing the e-mail itself) and confirming it so sometimes only clicking on unsubscribe doesn't work with one click.
And to make e-mail a nice tool tune what you receive - if you get gazzilion of notifications that you don't read then just unsubscribe…
I addressed this in another comment:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102870
Consider the two methods:
1. Just have a whitelist that I've described
2. Be proactive in unsubscribing. If you buy something from someone online, be proactive at the time you buy in finding the box which says you will not receive pointless emails from them (not all vendors will have that option). Ditto if you or an app you want to run requires your email address.
My question to you: If I go the proactive route, what do I gain compared to the whitelist approach? Yes, I could be proactive and actively unsubscribe. That is time lost - even if it's not too much time for some people - what is gained by doing it?
>And to make e-mail a nice tool tune what you receive - if you get gazzilion of notifications that you don't read then just unsubscribe…
I think the difference between me and many of the commenters is this: I want my inbox (and my email usage in general) to be for personal correspondence. A few exceptions are OK, but I want the majority of the emails in my inbox to be personal emails. So it's not about a gazillion notifications. I probably get less than one personal email per day. If I get more than one non-personal email/notification/confirmation receipt etc, then my inbox is more noise than value.
Again - you make it seem like it's gigantic work to keep your inbox tidy. Last time I had to click unsubscribe was months ago and it happens like 1-2 times a year - is that too much work?
1. If someone can't be bothered to spend a minute in their whole life to be able to communicate with me, it's a pretty strong signal. I've had plenty of people who imply they want to communicate with me, but then are very poor responders to my emails. A hoop filters those people out.
2. No one has complained. If anyone is annoyed, they just ignore it and I'll whitelist them anyway when I see their email.
3. Marketers will not invent a way to circumvent it, because it's too much trouble for them to. I'm not that important.
4. Keep in mind the system has been working for over a year. This isn't a proof of concept or something in my imagination. Furthermore, if you read the other comments, people are paying money to have this feature.
5. Just because you don't get annoying emails doesn't mean others don't. Roughly half of them are unsolicited (I did not request to be on those lists). I think more likely is that the automated emails you do receive are ones you want. Whereas I don't want any in my Inbox.
My final point: Given where I am now, what possible reason would I have for switching to your workflow? Your stance comes from one who has a "default" position: the status quo. Look at it from my side - my system is working, and is very low maintenance.
For spammers who don’t respect unsubscribes and you’re using Gmail, you can create a filter which immediately trashes the message based on the “from” address
That statement gets to the crux of the whole situation.
Why should I spend time tending an inbox, continually scanning for the unsubscribe link in any new email I receive? The sender put in almost no effort to send me that email, whereas I the recipient have to expend time getting off their list. I don't want to do that for the rest of my life. I'd rather just remove that email from my whitelist (one keystroke).
>For spammers who don’t respect unsubscribes and you’re using Gmail, you can create a filter which immediately trashes the message based on the “from” address
Same problem as above. I tried it and in the end found maintaining a blacklist (which is what you're essentially suggesting) burdensome. It's continual work for the rest of my life adding people to a blacklist. I inverted the whole thing. Let the sender work to get on my whitelist.
Fair point. In practice it has not been a problem. If I really want to get emails from them, I can always add them myself if they do not want to go through the trouble. On the flip side, If someone I know isn't willing to spend a minute once in their life to get access to me, it does send a strong signal on how much they value knowing me.
Gmail does a lot of filtering for me though already. I write a few filter rules if I intentionally want spammy emails, e.g. watching github changes, status on shipments, etc.
My rule of thumb for managing email is thusly
- if the email is read, its done
- if theres 100 spam mail, and the top link is marked read, all ones beneath it are too spammy to delete or remove out of sheer laziness
-if the email is starred, I need to refer back to it, but its not actionable (e.g. welcome email for hosting sites)
- if the email is marked important, defer it for later
I spend very little time on email per day following these rules. I have many filter rules set up so nothing but important emails get to me in designated sections
My rule of thumb for email is thusly
- only look at email 3 or 4 times at most. Once in morning, afternoon, evening.
- send emails asap if it can be done in 5 minutes or tell receipient about a delayed response later for longer actions.
-modify subject titles to reflect status on email thread
- DRY, dont repeat yourself. Send a link instead. Use autoresponders if your on vacation etc
- every month or two, go through all your spam, unsubscribe to everything
- use autotext expanders to write email signatutes if its necessary
-use ctrl + enter to send
- limit yourself to zero to two mouse left clicks per email. If you are doing anymore, you are doing it wrong. E.g. dont organize emails its a waste of time learn to use search and make rich subject email titles.
Yes, there is some small problem of having older messages "waiting for the right time" but this is not the problem of the e-mail itself but rather mental block to dedicate 1-3h to write response (you would spend same amount of time writing regular mail).