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Comment by venomsnake | Hacker News Reader

This is unworkable.

There are people like me which have policy of no byte lost. You have no way to enforce on a system that user has root access deletion of anything. So if you want the mail you send to be deleted - you cannot force it.

It also adds little value to the user - if you want autobot@spam-factory.com messages to be deleted in 3 days it is the job of the client - this is a simple script with simple rules.

But lets take the "classic" example of special offers of the week ... the assumption is that after the expiry it has no value for the consumer. Wrong - the user may collect them to try to find patterns. If something is not on discount now but has been discounted 5 times in the recent year, chances are it will be soon. Think steam sales - we know that Deus Ex: Human Revolution will be 75% off, because it has been on every steam sale so far.

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I think you're taking the metaphor a little too literally. My understanding of the author's argument was that every email should have a date and time attached to it, not for the client to delete it outright but for the client to be able to sort by time and date, as well as keep separate folders of past email and future email. I would LOVE this idea.

I don't think that's what the author is saying..I think he's literally saying the email will be deleted on the server if the time expiration occurs, unless the user specifically says to store it anyway (even after expiration). This would clear your inbox for things like invites to parties which have past without the need to manually delete them.

Well my apologies then if I misinterpreted -- now I think the author is taking his own idea too far then :). Deletion isn't necessary, just get it out of the regular inbox, and leave it somewhere else for later consideration if need be. That'd be the best of both worlds in my opinion.

Wrong - the user may collect them to try to find patterns.

The user may do a lot of things. But that doesn't mean they do. You're bring up an edge use case at best in trying to disprove an idea for the mainstream.

How about s/delete/archive, in gmail terminology (in other words, get it out of the inbox but have it still accessible in search).

I don't see this as a usecase for spam prevention, as you said, but for informational messages, offers, or activity digests that are superseded by later mailings it could be useful.

e.g. a notice about the elevator being out of order between 2pm and 3pm is not useful after that time. If I didn't see the message by 3pm or I was out of the office, there's no value in that message being in my inbox.

> e.g. a notice about the elevator being out of order between 2pm and 3pm is not useful after that time. If I didn't see the message by 3pm or I was out of the office, there's no value in that message being in my inbox.

There absolutely is, if there's an elevator service level agreement (SLA). I want the maintenance emails for my records.

Right, but it'd still be in your archive, just not on the frontpage in bold.

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