Show HN: Rebump – Bump Important Emails Until They're Answered
rebump.cc
rebump.cc
I appreciate a human-generated bump now and again, because it is a signal that they continue to care about what we were talking about. But automatically sending me message after machine-generated message to prod me into doing whatever they wanted? With no effort or intervening social judgment? Fuck that.
For people to whom this appeals, I'd suggest my approach: keep a "pending" list. If you haven't heard back and still care, you can always take the 30 seconds to say, "Hey, have you had a chance to think more about this?" or whatever the contextually appropriate thing is.
Also, you won't know it's machine generated, though we are considering an option to add a blurb explaining that it is a friendly reminder powered by Rebump.
Would you feel differently if that were the default?
I may not know it's machine-generated the first time if you hide it well enough. But I damned well will the second or the third.
Definitely see your point about how annoying it would be to get these one email forwards from my great-aunt, though. We are trying to convey to users that Rebumps should be used judiciously. It seems to be working so far.
There are plenty of folks I know with 100+ unread emails this week and a bunch of them will never get seen. So imo another email isn't the most effective way to resolve it.
I know you get so many emails that it takes you a while to reply, so I thought I'd help you out by sending you more emails.
Regards.
Rebump.
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Jest aside, nagging does work, so this technique probably would too, but I can imagine if someone started using it on me, it'd just filter the messages to the bin.
The product does look very well executed. Best of luck.
If you did mean to reply to that first email, this gets the job done. You can also customize the message to whatever you want. Even: "bump!"
Nagging works if the person you're nagging has forgotten about you and if they hold you in high enough priority in the first place.
However, if you mail someone competent and organized, and they deliberately shelve you because you are not as important to them as other things they're doing, they'll get annoyed if you nag.
Like spam, nagging is an unpleasant intrusion on your attention. Automated nagging can't possibly improve upon that. Response expectation mismatch is a human problem with social solutions, not technical ones. If someone doesn't respond to me, I might know why, and if I don't I can restate my expectations in a manner appropriate to the relationship. Similarly, if someone requests something of me and has an expectation that I'll do it within 3 days, I can mail them to confirm receipt of the request and let them know it'll be more like 5. Expectation management in interpersonal relationships should be handled by the people involved.
Wow -- they managed not to use the word "spam" anywhere on their site.
This is for people who you expect an answer from but the email has fallen through the cracks. Maybe it's starred, maybe they opened it on mobile and forgot to save as new. Your concern is definitely one we are keeping an eye out for but haven't seen it yet.
Not if the spammers use a botnet to change the email's source for each retry. Anyone who thinks spam originates from a fixed server name and IP is living in the past. More here:
http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/antispam.html
http://www.arachnoid.com/anti_spam/pic2_crop_small_trans.gif
Also, an easy way for a legitimate sender to be redefined as a spammer is for them to send copies of an e-mail until they get a reply.
> Your concern is definitely one we are keeping an eye out for but haven't seen it yet.
Like Bitcoin thefts, you won't see any sign of it until it's too late.
This idea violates the most basic civilized e-mail rule -- if you don't get a reply, don't badger the recipient. Spammers, of course, don't care about civilized behavior and will find this idea very appealing.
Will definitely read up on those concerns. Thank you so much for the resources and for preventing us from getting sleep at night from now on.
;-)
Yes, and that's exactly what spammers do. They know better than to send the same message more than once, but they certainly won't abandon an address they know to be valid (no bounce).
The first might say, "Our automated analysis tool has detected that your computer has been infected. Click this link for a repair."
The second might say, "We're sorry -- your bank has reported a hacking attempt and we need you to change your password. Please enter your login ID and your old and new password."
The third might say, "Is your wife no longer happy? Try our miracle ..." (use your imagination)
Spammers might be intellectually challenged people, but they're not perfectly stupid, on the ground that nothing is perfect.
...
Stupid honesty.
This is absolutely, brutally intolerable. It's hard enough maintaining spam-free email without this nonsense.
Rebump works with Gmail on Chrome/Firefox for now.
Feedback treasured.
But it won't automatically bump until you get a response. We think Rebump saves time and workflow that way. It plays very nicely with both Boomerang and YesWare.
That's because Boomerang understands and meets widely accepted email standards of behavior.
> We think Rebump saves time and workflow that way.
It's spam. No blizzard of words, however blinding, can change its identity. It renames a deplorable social email practice, but without changing its identity.
Civilized people write once, then wait for a reply. Spammers "bump" over and over again until they either get a reply or are classed as spam.
Civilized people have inboxes and outboxes. If an e-mail isn't transferred to the the inbox, the pending-action category, then any attempt to change its status by repeat mails is at the very least disrespectful of the recipient's choice of priorities.
All I am saying is that you need to find out how people think about these things. You're well past explaining, now you're rationalizing.
If you want mutiple accounts, you will need to sign in with an account, then sign out (top right of https://www.rebump.cc/emails/home/), then sign in the other account, etc.
Happy bumping
How does it work technically? Is the same first message sent every time? What is the feedback from people who are being "rebumped"?
Notably, your emails are HTML only.
Huh? How?
It's reliable enough for a spammer. Remember spam is a numbers game -- things only have to work as hoped a small percentage of the time for the system to work.
Even ignoring the fact that "my client has displayed the message, including any embedded images" is not equivalent to "I have read the message" (which is especially a factor in clients with a preview pane, where simply being the most recent message when the client is opened may result in the former condition, but quite often not the latter if the user is opening the client to send a message or look for a particular message.)
sounds like it works 100% of the time, 50% of the time.