Should expiring emails be more important than non-expiring?

[Joshua Baer]

Does something being expiring make it more important? Higher priority?

@plaintext wrote on Twitter:
Only works if Gmail, etc. rank short expiration messages higher. Otherwise, who wants to tag their outgoing spamwall first?

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/plaintext/statuses/27121083383545856

~Josh

[Steve Smith]

But surely if you give a higher priority to expiring emails they will
just become the new spammer tool/marked in spam systems as low
priority?

Steve

[Richi Jennings]

On Jan 19, 10:27 am, Steve Smith <st...@scsworld.co.uk> wrote:
> But surely if you give a higher priority to expiring emails they will
> just become the new spammer tool/marked in spam systems as low
> priority?

Agreed. If a sender wants to suggest that a message is higher
priority, let them set a Priority: header. Don't overload the
semantics of Expires:

[Matt Bowman]

My thought is that commercial email that was never opened and expired
should be moved to the trash, or, at the user's request in the MTA,
deleted permanently. To goal here is to remove unread and expired
messages - the expiry should match the expiration for the deal or the
password reset link or other CRM communication.

If I were to go on vacation and not check my email for a week, I would
have at least 60-70 offers that are no longer valid. These pollute my
inbox and make me frustrated that I signed up for them in the first
place. A much better user experience is to arrive at my inbox and have
only fresh and valid offers.

What do you think?

[Matt Bowman]

I should clarify - permanently deleting or moving an item to the trash
should be an option in the MTA, not necessarily something we put as a
MUST in the RFC.

[Matt Bowman]

Sorry for the comment spam, I just realized that I was writing MTA,
and what I really meant was the mail client.

[Joshua Baer]

Either that or move them to a special "Expired" folder.

~Josh