The Failure of Indexing - and the odd necessity of recopying parent messages
Michel Merlin
discussion about Including Parent Messages or not,
nd in Top or Bottom Posting}.
There is a basic principle that was source of Procter & Gamble's
success for years: organize after the very assets, not after the
appearances or ways of reaching those assets.
In a marketing company (as P&G), organize after PRODUCTS, not
after functions.
In a Message Store, organize after contents, not after "sent" or
"received" or "Draft" or "Replying to" or "Editable" or else.
IOW, make folders named "2004", "2005", or "cars",
"entertainment", "clothes", etc., not "Received", "Drafts",
"Sent". And name messages after what they are, not after what
they reply to!
See Details in the 4 child messages:
1. Modified vs Sent message
2. Thread's Subject vs Message's Title
3. Storing by DATES, not by Sent, Received, or Draft
4. Searching, Indexing - and why copy parent messages
At the end, the odd necessity of recopying parent messages in
every reply, thus multiplying by 3 or 4 the actual volume of
mail and news exchanges, is the very damageable result of the
unfortunate failure of the indexing system.
Paris, Wed 19 Apr 2006 16:41:40 +0200
Michel Merlin
a) In OE (Outlook Express) each time you modify a (draft)
message,
OE updates its "Date" (that you can see by hitting <Ctrl><F3>).
This is quite correct, but to avoid mistakes further down,
I suggest to rename that date into "Modified" (and BTW to
remove the useless coma):
« Modified: Wed 19 Apr 2006 16:02:08 +0200 »
b) When you print a message, that "Date" is then called
"Sent", no matter if the message is still a draft, or a
received, or a sent message. This is wrong: when it's a draft,
it has NEVER been sent!
I suggest OE writes the true state, "Modified", "Received" or
"Sent"; or, if this is too much, just always write "Modified".
Accurate language is always a way to avoid plenty problems
further down in the process.
Paris, Wed 19 Apr 2006 16:45:25 +0200
Michel Merlin
Organizing implies Naming. Which implies in turn: give each
message a TITLE that accurately reflects its CONTENTS.
The traditional "Re: ..." is a big fault: it refers to the
function of the message (*replying* to this or that parent
message), instead of reflecting the very contents of the very
message it "titles".
The "Subject" should present the body of the *thread*,
the "Title" should present the body of the *message*.
To apply this very basic principle would bring a huge
improvement to millions people on earth, and would require
very little work, as the only 3 little changes to do would be:
1. call "Subject" the string presenting the *thread*
2. call "Title" the string presenting the *message*
3. THE "TITLE" CASE MUST BE PRESENTED BLANK
I mean, in each and every program (as Outlook Express) or site
(as Yahoo Mail), when presenting to the user a composing window
ready to fill with his reply, sure it's OK to pre-fill many
cases ("From:", "To:"), but NOT the TITLE; it's up to the writer
to build a meaningful title actually and accurately representing
the contents of his message; none can do it for him, especially
not a stupid automated "Re: ".
When the user forgets to fill that "title" case, then the
program or site should politely decline his submission, return
to him and gently ask:
"Please build a short title accurately representing the contents
of your message".
Paris, Wed 19 Apr 2006 16:46:10 +0200
Michel Merlin
When storing messages, you should store them after titles
(better than subjects), or dates, not after "sent" or
"received".
In my OE (Outlook Express), I have a big folder, named
"0_CHRONO". The "0_" is to make that folder sorted in 1st place,
even if I create other folders, like "Anges Gardiens",
"Canopus", "1999", "2000", "2002", "2003", "2004", "2005".
In the seconds after I have sent messages, I immediately move
them from "Sent Items" to that "0_CHRONO" folder. Alike, when
parsing my Inbox, I delete all the remaining spam (the Anti-Spam
can't be perfect), and I immediately move anything else to
"0_CHRONO".
When 2005 was finished, I renamed at once "0_CHRONO" into
"2005", and immediately created a new "0_CHRONO" folder.
Doing so once a year is nothing.
When I write to a site using their "Contact" form, I make a
copy, that gets automatically stored in "Drafts", and that I
move to "0_CHRONO" immediately when sent.
Unfortunately for this reason I can't move to "0_CHRONO" the
drafts I didn't send (I would lose the difference between those
unsent drafts and the actually sent messages to "Contact"
forms). Which leaves me with 2 folders to search ("0_CHRONO" and
"Drafts") instead of 1, making me many times failing to find
something (until I remember to search the other folder -
featherbrains do need good organization... ;-) ).
To improve that situation I would suggest to Microsoft:
- give messages different appearances when they are
received, read, draft, sent. Best would be give them
different icons, allowing sorting after it (just a click on
the header would sort all the received, then all the read,
then all the drafts, then all the sent).
- put all the messages in one single folder, named "0_CHRONO".
Thanks to the different appearances (and functionalities, as
sorting), there will be just benefits (a lot), no drawbacks.
Paris, Wed 19 Apr 2006 16:47:05 +0200
Michel Merlin
I recall that in my OE (Outlook Express), I created a "0_CHRONO"
folder where I move everything, be it received, sent, or draft.
When searching for messages exchanged with a given person,
or about a given issue, I just hit <F3> in my "0_CHRONO"
folder, and I find all the relevant messages, no matter if
received or sent.
When I was still using the default organization, I had to search
at the same time "Inbox" and "Sent Items", which made that work
much more tedious.
When I want to see together all the messages belonging to a same
conversation,
- in the mail folders I go to "OE > View > Current View
> Group Messages by Conversation",
- for the newsgroup folders I go to "OE > Tools > Options
> Read > Reading Messages" and I check the
"Automatically expand grouped messages" case.
If this worked as it should, there would be no need or benefit
in copying parent messages inside a reply.
Unfortunately the above often fails, for several reasons:
- people too often reply through other ways than the standard
clicking of "Reply" (which would ensure them their message is
properly indexed);
- when clicking "Forward", programs and sites generally omit to
index the forwarded message (understanding their reasoning is
beyond me...)
- a few sites, as news://msnews.microsoft.com, delete messages
after a very short delay. Understanding the reasoning behind
that (obviously deliberate) weak persistence is another thing
beyond me. This makes necessary to copy and recopy messages,
and discourages any attempt at improving the quality of the
messages posted (why bother, they will get deleted soon...).
At the end, the odd necessity of recopying parent messages in
every reply, thus multiplying by 3 or 4 the actual volume of
mail and news exchanges, is the very damageable result of the
unfortunate failure of the indexing system.
Paris, Wed 19 Apr 2006 16:47:45 +0200