I searched around a bit before posting, and I find that GMail's
feature of grouping emails by conversation is either misunderstood or
found to be very annoying by several people.
First of all, let me clarify that I like the feature that GMail groups
emails by conversation. It's just that I do not like the criterion
for what constitutes a 'conversation' to be 'emails with the same
subject'.
Example: I sent out an email to a person I found through references
online with the subject: "A hello from ABC to XYZ". She *replies*,
but to be consistent, she changes the subject to "A hello from XYZ to
ABC". Her REPLY, even though its headers contains the reference to my
original emails MID, is not grouped with my original email.
Google groups had this annoying feature of grouping threads based on
subjects, and eventually got it right. Cannot GMail do the same --
group conversations by threads, not subjects. A tree view is
desirable, but not essential.
There are IMAP clients that can connect to GMail and present them in a
way that I want, so I am not going to lose sleep if GMail does not
implement it. That said, I would be really happy should GMail
implement what Google groups implemented.
suggest a feature:
Google Help › Gmail Help › About Contacting Support (at the bottom)
› "Let us know"
click on “Conversation View changes” --> “Ability to add or remove
messages from conversations”
> I searched around a bit before posting, and I find that GMail's
> feature of grouping emails by conversation is either misunderstood or
> found to be very annoying by several people.
True.
> Her REPLY, even though its headers contains the reference to my
> original emails MID, is not grouped with my original email.
The big problem with grouping by references in the headers is that,
for the majority of people, changing the subject line DOES mean that
they want to start a new conversation, regardless of what the headers
say. For example, many people completely ignore their address book and
start new emails by finding a previous email from their correspondent
and replying to it, then changing the subject line as they like.
The general problem is that metadata that is hidden from the user
(like the References header) will often be inaccurate. Data that is
front-and center, like the subject line, is much more likely to be
meaningful.
(Google uses the same principle in their web search algorithms. They
completely ignore hidden data like the "keywords" and "description"
headers in html. They focus on things that are actively seen by users
like link text and page titles.)
> The big problem with grouping by references in the headers is that,
> for the majority of people, changing the subject line DOES mean that
> they want to start a new conversation, regardless of what the headers
> say. For example, many people completely ignore their address book and
> start new emails by finding a previous email from their correspondent
> and replying to it, then changing the subject line as they like.
I agree with the user case scenario (example) you provided above.
But, should GMail implement "conversations" based on threading rather
than subject, the users will quickly realise they'd rather copy-paste
the email address and start a new email rather than click reply and
have to deal with changing subjects, cleaning out the message body
etc. The transition would happen rather quickly, would correspond
with the actions they actually took and give them far less to 8!+(h
about.
> The general problem is that metadata that is hidden from the user
> (like the References header) will often be inaccurate. Data that is
> front-and center, like the subject line, is much more likely to be
> meaningful.
That I strongly disagree with. The email headers are generated by the
MUA and the MTA (applications). They are *FAR* more 'accurate' than
what can be dinked around with or modified by humans.
Whether or not it corresponds to general/mass user expectations is a
highly subjective matter, and the best you and I can do is just hand-
wave our view points.
I believe grouping by subject is not just meaningless, not just
inaccurate, but is wrong. A lot of people have trouble putting a
subject for their email, and at most times, is just a plain "hi" (or
something just as vague and catch-all). Grouping by
> But, should GMail implement "conversations" based on threading rather
> than subject, the users will quickly realise they'd rather copy-paste
> the email address and start a new email rather than click reply and
> have to deal with changing subjects, cleaning out the message body
> etc. The transition would happen rather quickly, would correspond
> with the actions they actually took and give them far less to 8!+(h
> about.
That might be true if everyone was using gmail. But conversations
frequently take place between a gmail user and a (for example) outlook
user. The outlook user will never see any change and continue to reply
to old threads in order to start new ones.
> > The general problem is that metadata that is hidden from the user
> > (like the References header) will often be inaccurate. Data that is
> > front-and center, like the subject line, is much more likely to be
> > meaningful.
> That I strongly disagree with. The email headers are generated by the
> MUA and the MTA (applications). They are *FAR* more 'accurate' than
> what can be dinked around with or modified by humans.
But both are the result of human actions. (Either editing the subject
line, or choosing between the "reply" and "new message" buttons.) The
difference is that one of those choices has a clear and easily
observable effect, while the other choice has no observable effect
unless you are using a threaded mail reader.
> I believe grouping by subject is not just meaningless, not just
> inaccurate, but is wrong. A lot of people have trouble putting a
> subject for their email, and at most times, is just a plain "hi" (or
> something just as vague and catch-all). Grouping by
If you had asked me before I ever saw gmail, I probably would have
agreed with you. But in the end, after using gmail for years with a
wide variety of correspondents, I find that it is very rare that I
want to either break-up or combine conversations differently than
gmail's "stupid" algorithm. It just works, almost all the time. Of
course, it doesn't work in every situation and for some people with
very specific setups it may be a deal-breaker preventing them from
using gmail at all.
> If you had asked me before I ever saw gmail, I probably would have
> agreed with you. But in the end, after using gmail for years with a
> wide variety of correspondents, I find that it is very rare that I
> want to either break-up or combine conversations differently than
> gmail's "stupid" algorithm. It just works, almost all the time. Of
> course, it doesn't work in every situation and for some people with
> very specific setups it may be a deal-breaker preventing them from
> using gmail at all.
I'm definitely finding it a deal-breaker. Both in business and
personal e-mails I often see very generic subject lines. Whether it's
named Invoice or Work Request or New File, a majority of my e-mail
ends up grouped into incorrect conversations through GMail. It's
definitely a dealbreaker to me, and really too bad as I was eager to
switch over.
Always insisting on sorting by Subject is very confusing and annoying.
It is particularly annoying when you are trying to review a
conversation that took place months ago. You find it embedded in four
or five "conversations" in completely arbitary ways. In fact in this
context Gmail is basically unusable. I have resorted to copying
dozens of messages into a word file.
There are many other reasons why Conversation View is sometimes a very
bad way of looking at messages.
> > If you had asked me before I ever saw gmail, I probably would have
> > agreed with you. But in the end, after using gmail for years with a
> > wide variety of correspondents, I find that it is very rare that I
> > want to either break-up or combine conversations differently than
> > gmail's "stupid" algorithm. It just works, almost all the time. Of
> > course, it doesn't work in every situation and for some people with
> > very specific setups it may be a deal-breaker preventing them from
> > using gmail at all.
> I'm definitely finding it a deal-breaker. Both in business and
> personal e-mails I often see very generic subject lines. Whether it's
> named Invoice or Work Request or New File, a majority of my e-mail
> ends up grouped into incorrect conversations through GMail. It's
> definitely a dealbreaker to me, and really too bad as I was eager to
> switch over.
> Always insisting on sorting by Subject is very confusing and annoying.
> It is particularly annoying when you are trying to review a
> conversation that took place months ago. You find it embedded in four
> or five "conversations" in completely arbitary ways. In fact in this
> context Gmail is basically unusable. I have resorted to copying
> dozens of messages into a word file.
> There are many other reasons why Conversation View is sometimes a very
> bad way of looking at messages.
> On Feb 15, 10:18 pm, Ken Walden wrote:
> > On Jan 28, 8:54 pm, JoshuaDPS wrote:
> > > If you had asked me before I ever saw gmail, I probably would have
> > > agreed with you. But in the end, after using gmail for years with a
> > > wide variety of correspondents, I find that it is very rare that I
> > > want to either break-up or combine conversations differently than
> > > gmail's "stupid" algorithm. It just works, almost all the time. Of
> > > course, it doesn't work in every situation and for some people with
> > > very specific setups it may be a deal-breaker preventing them from
> > > using gmail at all.
> > I'm definitely finding it a deal-breaker. Both in business and
> > personal e-mails I often see very generic subject lines. Whether it's
> > named Invoice or Work Request or New File, a majority of my e-mail
> > ends up grouped into incorrect conversations through GMail. It's
> > definitely a dealbreaker to me, and really too bad as I was eager to
> > switch over.
