Folders vs. Tags For Shared Email Accounts? 148
binarybum writes "I run a student organization with a 10-member 'board of directors.' We hardly ever all have time to attend meetings and a large part of how we interact with the student body is through email. We have a shared email account (accessible by the 10 of us on the board) right now that is typically accessed through an outlook web-access portal. We've been attempting to keep things organized in the account through a complex collection of folders that have been tacked on ad libum. It's turned into a complete mess. I have the onerous task of restructuring the folder system in hopes of achieving sustainable organization, but I'm wondering if I should just switch us over to a tagging system — perhaps Gmail. Has anyone used tags for a multi-user account successfully or does it end up being just as messy?"
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Re:Go with tags (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Go with tags (Score:5, Insightful)
With 10 people on one email account, it's hardly surprising that it turned into a clusterfuck.
Re: Go with a mailing list (Score:2, Interesting)
It would make more sense to create a mailing list, and have emails sent to the list forwarded to all ten members. Then they could administer their folders as they see fit.
With 10 people on one email account, it's hardly surprising that it turned into a clusterfuck.
Hear, hear!
Corporate emails at my work consist of endless top-posting after re-top-posting that must be read from the bottom to the top to make any sense of the mess. In the process, I need to skip over multiple re-inclusions of the same email, and not get annoyed that the entire mess mostly consists of disclaimers. LookOut seems to strongly encourage this technique of mis-communication.
"What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant disclaimer."
"
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Re: LookOut (Score:2, Informative)
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I hate top posting. the only thing worse than top posting, is when there's one person insisting on using the opposite posting style in reply to an email with many replies already in one style. (ie. top posting in reply to a bottom posted email thread/bottom posting in reply to a top-posted email thread) Then you cant just read bottom to top (or top to b
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Corporate emails at my work consist of endless top-posting after re-top-posting that must be read from the bottom to the top to make any sense of the mess.
I hate top posting. the only thing worse than top posting, is when there's one person insisting on using the opposite posting style in reply to an email with many replies already in one style. (ie. top posting in reply to a bottom posted email thread/bottom posting in reply to a top-posted email thread) Then you cant just read bottom to top (or top to bottom), instead you need to jump all over the friggin' place to follow the conversation.
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That's the winner, right there.
With all the organizational emphasis these days placed on "teams" (a term that makes me a little sick), you'd think that making a simple mailing list would be the most obvious choice, as ShieldW0lf points out.
Better yet (at least for me) is the old bulletin board model. Even with most mailing lists, I find myself ignoring a lot of the incoming messages, mostly because most of them aren't important to me.
With a simple forum-style bulletin board, I ca
Re:Go with tags (Score:4, Insightful)
Intersections are quite common in real life, and designing the perfect category tree is not easy nor fast. Even when you succeed, you're always running the risk of being confronted with a new item that doesn't fit in your tree, or would need a complete tree redesign to fit in well (see biology).
However, tag systems usually are "all-flat" (Gmail is anyway): there is no notion of sub-category.
If you're going to have dozens of tags, this is going to be messy too...
Re:Go with tags (Score:5, Insightful)
(Actually I agree with other posters who say this is just a normal application for an email list, let people do whatever they want, but the OP ruled that out?)
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Lucky Gmail combines tags with great searching, and it sounds like it's already on the table. The good thing with tagging is that since it's not stuck to a single folder, duplicate tags (if you will) aren't going to clog things u
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Based on having done it a number of times before, I disagree. Free-text search gives poor result relevancy compared to search that's aware of metadata. So use tags, AND also invest in a decent search tool.
And it's worth spending some time coming up with an initial set of tags. That, by the way, is taxonomy not ontology. Ontology is about modeling a wider range of relationships than the "is-a"/"has-a" that taxonomy covers.
If the users want to add mo
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The best way to go would be to try out a "support ticket system."
why sare? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:why sare? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to use tags, since you're a small group you're pretty much going to have to limit yourself to a set predefined ones.. and then the only difference between tags and folders is that a document can only have one folder, but several tags. If you're only 10 people I doubt you really need that finegrained a control, so folders should work just as well as tags.
That said, what this essentially boils down to is the general answer to next to every bloody architectural question out there is; it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do it well. Seriously, what solution you choose is next to never important, it's how well you use that solution that matters.
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Should such email data be tagged 'politics' or 'election' or 'RonPaul' or something entirely different.
When you alone are using the tagging it is easy to remember what tags are for what. If you share it, you should also share a hierarchy of tag name/use conventions. Without it, you are just los
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For example: If you have a '2008race' tag and an 'Election2008' tag it gets messy quickly.
When this is discovered, the incorrect tag will be deleted, the message will be tagged with the correct one, and the person who used a completely new tag when there was one suitable would be flogged. Just as if someone puts a message in the wrong folder.
Should such email data be tagged 'politics' or 'election' or 'RonPaul' or something entirely different.
It should be tagged 'politics' if it has to do with politics, in this case yes. It should be tagged 'election' if it has to do with an election, so again, yes. It should be tagged 'RonPaul' if it has to do with Ron Paul, so who knows.
With tags it's not
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For us, e-mails
Lazy versus incompetent (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I think joint accounts are normally a terrible idea. They are extremely difficult to maintain since (supposedly) everyone is responsible. In my experience if everyone is supposed to be responsible then in reality no one is actually responsible. Tragedy of the commons [wikipedia.org] applies here. Everyone trusts someone else will deal with it and it becomes a big old mess.
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That only works well under the presumption that everyone's able/bothered to work out their own filtering system... and that's one heck of a presumption :)
Correction: That only works well if you accept that people are capable of being moderately competent at their job.
This is a textbook example of someone trying to use a technical answer to replace (not improve) a human process. Unless the members of the group are going to actively use a consistent and mutually comprehensible process, no amount of tagging or arbitrary organisational measures is going to work. And in any group of 5 or more people, that's a lot to ask.
The solution: Set a few basic expecta
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Forward to individual accounts (Score:4, Informative)
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Somewhat the same situation here (Score:1, Interesting)
Use a group (Score:5, Informative)
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Link one email address to several accounts (Score:1, Insightful)
This is far more efficient, since then each person can manage their own emails, and it's also far more SECURE. When people leave the board, you don't have to keep changing email addresses. Also, when someone sends an email from this one address, you don't know who actually sent it so there is zero accountability.
The solution you have is by
I like the tags (Score:1)
Tags (Score:3, Insightful)
With tags you can create arbitrary categories. So a "status" tag can be assigned to an email that already has a "report" tag but also to the one that has a "meetings" tag. In other words it is like being able to put the same object in two different folders.
One drawback of tags is, that it is harder to visualize. Google does a good job with searching but I can't think how you can visualize it (as a graph/hypergraph actually might work).
The other drawback is that people are more used to folder because they dealt with file systems before ("I'll make a folder for dates, then inside we'll split them by topic" kind of thinking).
Suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
Google Apps (but how?) (Score:2)
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Folders allow better organization (Score:2, Insightful)
Tagging on the other hand is just like having a folder a single level deep. One difference is that you can tag the same e-mail multi
I used to think that way.. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Msg 1 tags: bank, credit
Msg 2 tags: credit, visa
Msg 3 tags: bank, visa
Define the drill-down structure.
If you are going to limit user input, so that some keyword combinations are prohibited, you are essentially back to using a rigid set of cats & sub-cats.
My solution has always been to list related tags. Ex: when browsing "credit" show related tag "visa", "bank", or use a recursive function to go back X relationships to show the entire tag family (i.e. bank => visa => c
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So at the top, you could go bank->visa or visa->bank and you'd see message3.
It's not a hierarchy.
Top level is
bank
credit
visa
credit
bank
visa
visa
credit
bank
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http://del.icio.us/tag/multiple+tags [del.icio.us]
Tags: Good; Another Idea? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's another idea you might, or might not, like:
Use GMail, or similar, for a group of accounts, one of which is the main, public address. This main account auto-forwards to the 10 member accounts, much like a list-serve. Replies from a member are CC'ed to the main account (set the rules right, or you could end up with an endless loop!!) and the 'Reply To:' field from the members is to the main account. This way, everybody gets everything, the group account is still the focal point, and everybody is responsible for keeping their own account organized.
If a single person is responsible for all of this (you?), you can set it up such that you are the one who can make changes to all the accounts and the others only have emailing privileges (but I haven't thought this part out and it may be difficult with some systems). One thing to consider if you use this is to either have an agreement (which some will break) or a setup that does not allow the users to use this account setup with out the CC'ing. This prevents them from using the account for personal or nefarious reasons.
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You can certainly have an email in two places; but that works as you'd expect - there are two unrelated mails in two unrelated folders. There isn't a magic "This message is the same as that message" relationship stored.
i.e. If you copy a message into folders "TODO.Urgent", and "Customer Bob" there is no notion that these messages are the same.
Ideally the copied message should be treated as a symlink, or similar. If that were the case you'd be able to reply to the first message and the second would be u
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I loathed the usage of lotus notes so much that I managed to not notice!
In general, though, I had the impression it was more featureful than Outlook, etc.
Me? I use mutt for mail handling at home & work these day!
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Forums (Score:2)
An added benefit is that if all connections are secured (https) then provided the core system is setup properly, all correspondence is safe fro
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Folders are tags, with restrictions. (Score:1)
Let's ask the stupid questions first... (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently, I'm completely unclear as to what kind of information you are attempting to organize here.
You imply you communicate with each other via e-mail, you say you communicate with the student body via e-mail. Fine, so what exactly is the purpose of these myriad nested folders? What is the organizational problem you are trying to solve?
You have a broken culture (Score:5, Interesting)
The secretary's job is not just the completion of the minutes. But to organize and forward on information that is required for the board. Information that is supposed to represent the boards point of view should go through the same single point.
Ad hoc access to, filtering of, replying to and otherwise manipulating the email is broken. One of the symptoms of that brokenness is the problem you are seeing now.
Fix the culture, the rest will follow.
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Do you want to see who's read what (Score:1)
"outlook web-access portal..." (Score:1, Troll)
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We Switched their Tags with Folgers Crystals... (Score:1)
Apathy is hard to cure. (Score:1)
It's an interesting question, kind of, but it doesn't seem worth a front page link.
Advice from another student group (Score:2, Interesting)
uhm, mailman? NNTP? (Score:1)
ad libum? (Score:4, Funny)
This phrase bears to Latin the same relation that "el trucko" bears to Spanish.
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What are you trying to do? (Score:2)
My suggestion is that the filing system consist of a folder for each project you are working on, and an archive for folders from past projects.
Don't let yourself have a "miscellaneous" folder, that'll just become a dumping ground for things no-one wants to deal with.
Don't forget to make a few folders for things you might not consider a project, like suggestions for future projects.
So, imagining that you are a kite-flying organization, some exam
Who cares? (Score:2)
Tags. Or three folders maximum. (Score:2)
If you use folders, I suggest you reduce your amount of them to a maximum of three: Important, Archive & Junk. You can even actuallly reduce that to Inbox and Archive. Or make a list of [Name]SawIt folders. The last one in the alphabet is responsible for archiving it into archive. That way you can make sure everyone read the important stuff. Just move it to the next userfolder in line after you've r
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You can with dynamic saved search "folders," which are pretty much a prerequisite to making any use of tags to begin with.
redirect to private Mailman (Score:1)
I then set up Mail man to munge the reply-to fields so that the reply to field is the same as the private listserv. As a result, we can talk amongst oursevles about someth
Wiki (Score:1)
ad libum (Score:2)
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Use Categories (Tags), Outlook Has Them (Score:1)
A village is missing its idiot (Score:2, Insightful)
Your setup is completely idiotic. A shared account is just begging to be abused, particularly in a student politics environment.
Email arrives, on an issue which incriminates a board member: "Oh gee, it's been deleted and nobody knows who did it or what it contained." Issue turns up at the local student meeting and details regarding why that dodgy contract was approved: "Golly, looks like that email was removed." Crazy stuff. Unless your cabal intentionally wants to make itself unaccountable, you need to f
And a quick Google.. (Score:1)
http://www.taglocity.com/ [taglocity.com]
Seems to be what you are looking for?
Admit it (Score:1)
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Email is the Wrong tool (Score:1)
Wrong tool for the wrong problem (Score:2, Informative)
If it is "discussion between a group of people" then email is the wrong solution. That's what nttp was invented for - threaded discussions. Even a modern blog/bbs will do a better job.
Secondly, part the secretary's job is summarise and communicate the businesss and decisions of the board. And _sometimes_ the reasons for the decisions. If you can't write minutes, have a dedicated blog. With a printed hardcopy filed with your departmental/faculty secretary.
On that front,
Yes, Use Gmail (Score:1)
If you are looking to completely revise how you use email, I am sure there are 100 ways to accomplish it (and some suggestions here are helpful). However, it seem like the current system is working fairly well for you (and your colleagues) and you just want to streamline it somewhat.
You can do this by using Gmail with their "tags" but, more importantly, the ability to never have to delete anything and search everything.
Good luck!
Your solution (Score:2)
I think a Google Group would work far more efficiently. Each 'board member' would have their own account, and have some administrative access. the masses would have less access. If there are recurring cases where you need to communicate to all 'board members', but privately (eg without the student body reading that communication), then perhaps two groups,
Wiki Wiki (Score:2)
Use a wiki.
Your organisation appears to adhere to a "shared information repository" culture. Email was not designed with this culture in mind. You use the wrong tool for the wrong purpose. With email, every person and/or every role within the organisation should have a unique email address (eg john@example.com or sales@example.com, the second being just a forwarding address). If more than any person (save for the admin) has access to someone else's email then the system is broken.
Wikis can fit in yo
Is this the solution the actual problem? (Score:2)
Thunderbird search (Score:2)
Tags, Forums, and a question (Score:2)
Which leads me to this question: is there any hosted service that provides either email or forum that gives detailed and accurate read-tracking? I have a need for two parties to communicate, and to legally prove when each party reads a given message. Return receipts in traditional email are a joke. I've googled quite a bit, and other tha
Try Google Sub-Accounts (Score:2)
Log in to Gmail, then go to Settings / Accounts / Add another e-mail address.
Each person will get a unique email address but the email can all be accessed and sorted by person or keyword through one central account.
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I'm not in favor of lots of meetings in any organization, but I do like to have the ability to interact with other people who will lead me to something I haven't thought of before. Maybe I can get something close to that by searching