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Comment by Timothee | Hacker News Reader

I find all these new email products (Sparrow, Mailbox, etc.) interesting on a UI/UX level but they're highly irrelevant to me. I always read about how hard it has become to manage one's inbox, but I really don't have a problem with it.

My system is simple: do not sign-up for newsletter or notifications (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, etc.) you won't read, unsubscribe anytime you realize you don't read the ones you receive, delete emails you won't ever need again, archive the ones that are nice to keep around but won't require anything from you anytime soon, and use filters whenever possible.

So in the end, I don't receive that many emails per day. I certainly don't receive any promotions in the mail… that's just asking for trouble.

Right now I have 25 threads in my inbox and the vast majority of them I keep around because they have pictures I want to save in iPhoto but haven't had time to. (I need to find a system for that actually)

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  > My system is simple: do not sign-up for newsletter 
  > or notifications (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, 
  > etc.) you won't read, unsubscribe anytime you realize 
  > you don't read the ones you receive, delete emails 
  > you won't ever need again, archive the ones that are 
  > nice to keep around but won't require anything from 
  > you anytime soon, and use filters whenever possible.

If that fulfills 100% of your email wants, awesome!

I've been managing my email fairly well with various hand-rolled filters (which are a pain to update) since the 1990s and I have to say: I still think there's a lot of potential value in what Google is rolling out here.

  > unsubscribe anytime you realize 
  > you don't read the ones you receive,

Again, if it works for you: perfect!

This doesn't work for me.

The reason why is because there are whole classes of emails (notifications, etc) that I do want to read... but only occasionally, and I don't want those classes of emails clogging up my inbox.

Obviously, I can and do manage this myself today with filters/rules/labels/etc. It is totally possible. It is also a pain in the butt sometimes. So I'm eager to see what Google can do here.

I evidently failed to convey in my comment that I'm not saying that the new features are a bad thing.

I totally understand that it's a problem for many people. (you should see my wife's inbox… I try to intervene now and then but it's a lost cause)

I almost wish I had an inbox problem so that I could try Mailbox, Sparrow, or whatever to finally have a solution to my problem. :)

How about those newsletters you're happy to read occasionally, but you don't want to interrupt you with notifications etc.?

I've got into the habit of marking all email with "unsubscribe" in it as read by default. I'll still see it when I open up my inbox, but it avoids me ever seeing a notification for something useless.

For those, you have a filter that archives them and gives them a label. If you want to read them, open the label.

I don't really have any newsletter that fits this. But I'd do what Ives is saying and use filters to put them out of the way.

I'm not a gmail user, but if the following filter is available, I will move:

* Put all newsletters in a tab so I don't see them * Delete all but the latest five unread of any particular subscription * Delete anything older than 180 days -- even if I've read it, unless I've 'starred' it.

Can it do that? Coz that would absolutely kill for subscriptions. iTunes does that sort of thing for podcasts. How can newsletters be harder?

Good advice for zero inbox, unfortunately most people aren't this organized and don't think this way and it seems like Google wants Gmail to benefit the most people.

Absolutely. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, or that it's bad or anything like that. New email interfaces is just one of these things that has never been really useful to me. I tried Mailbox for a bit but it's solving a problem I don't have. This new feature seem as well.

It's almost impossible to /avoid/ getting signed up for a pile of "newsletter" spam. Pretty much everybody that has access to my email address floods me with them.

Keep hitting the 'unsubscribe' links. For those that don't work, put in a filter to auto-delete before you see them.

Or you can just mark as spam. Most of those "newsletters" and advertisements follow a pattern that is easy for Bayesian filters to recognize (I speak from experience). Your spam filter has been trained enough when it preemptively removes such mail from your inbox.

I used to think that way. Then I started actually using the unsubscribe links and (surprise!) I found that I stopped getting so much junk. I don't really have to hit unsubscribe very much anymore, just whenever my name gets added by some new service I signed up for.

Any time I get something I don't want I click the unsubscribe link. If the link doesn't work, if there aren't any or if I need to do more than legally necessary (e.g. logging into my account), I click "Report spam" in Gmail.

I don't feel bad about clicking it because I trust Gmail as a whole to be smart enough not to penalize an account globally if I'm the only one reporting it. Plus, when I do it, it's because it's actually spam.

Over time, it really works.

Personally, I view "mark as spam" as a way for me to cast a vote on bad email behavior. No, I do not want to receive the latest news about your product that I bought 5 years ago -- yes, it is spam when you email me about it. It is spam when you email me asking for money just because I attended your group's meetings a few times in college. It is spam when you send me an email that does not render unless I enable HTML. It is spam when you drop my friends' names in an attempt to get me to sign up for your website.

Spam is not just about scams, malware, and crime. It is about the annoying deluge, the fact that I have to open a browser and enable Javascript from 20 different sources when I unsubscribe, and generally about unsolicited, unwanted email trying to get me to do things I am not going to do. Filters, including a spam filter, are what keep my inbox under control.

I have a separate email address for this purpose. Anybody I know personally or trust gets my regular email address. Anybody who might sign me up for a newsletter gets my spam email address. I don't get any newsletter spam at my regular address.

Out of curiosity, what do you do when you run into an OSS project which requires you to subscribe to a mailing list in order to ask a question? I find the friction of this high enough that I end up staying subscribed forever (and filtering the mail) rather than unsubscribing and possibly having to resubscribe later. I'm glad gmail doesn't have a quota for email bandwidth...

I always use a temporary mail address : http://jetable.org/en/index

I haven't had the problem, but the mailing-lists I've come across are more often than not ran on mailing-list systems that let me pick the emails I want to receive (e.g. Google Groups). I typically go for none or just replies to my own posts. If I want to see what's up I check the site.

But if your filter archives, labels and marks as read the emails, you're fine because your inbox is cleared of them but you still have the ability to check the activity.

I filter to a label and skip inbox. Once in awhile I scan the list (rather lower volume at this point) and see if there is anything I can help with, then I select all for that label and delete.

"Out of curiosity, what do you do when you run into an OSS project which requires you to subscribe to a mailing list in order to ask a question?"

One massively helpful resource for this is gmane. You sign up for the mailing list and disable the delivery of mail (usually you must be subscribed to the list to post a message), then use gmane to read messages (hopefully using your favorite NNTP client instead of the gmane website).

http://gmane.org/

I have a much simpler solution: filters. If only Google would get off their asses and implement sieve...

Wow I do the same exact thing. I never need anything more than an inbox and a few labels.

I do this exact same thing. Works perfectly for me with minimal effort.

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