PUBLIC MARKS with search restart

The ad-hoc mailing list is cool. But you never know when a discussion stop and restart. There are some ongoing discussions I have with friends which last for years but at a very irregular pace and sometimes with 6 months of inactivity.

The last year and a half I have been confronted to a similar issue:

1. It costs to create a mailing list (admin work, email addresses, etc.)

2. Archives are good, specifically in a work context. It helps rebuild context for people who are late in the discussion. It helps remembering some decisions.

3. People do not know how to use dynamic folders for managing their emails. (Unfortunately) (All my mails of the last 20 years are in dated space folder with dynamic folders created for the current needs)

4. People do not know how to unsubscribe a mailing-list, but they know how to cc someone.

5. Some mails really belongs to more than one context, and it is a struggle for some people to know where to send them.

Some thoughts about a possible system (all issues not solved)

1. So I was wondering about a system where each mail has a unique id (already the case) and is saved online with its own archive.

2. The mail before being sent to the recipients has its header modified with a Archived-At: containing the URI of this specific mail.

3. It could have another header X-Thread-Archive-at: with the list or content of all emails in this thread.

4. The ACLs are dynamically set on each Web individual archive depending on who has been copied to this email.

5. The ACLs are inclusive for any new persons who is being added to the thread, including previous messages.

6. There is a possibility to tag and/or do positive bias filtering on emails the same way we do with spam, in a working context we would have a kind of shared vocabulary of contexts dynamically created. So the mails would be showing in dynamic contextual views.

Posted by: karl at October 13, 2010 12:54 AM

karl says:

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

January 3, 2010 at 1:32 pm

When someone says ideology, I often, think « church » and all its derivatives : zealots, blasphemy, etc. An healthy ecosystem has diversity is hackable and makes it possible to have different outcomes.

1. Prehistory: « Open » being a kind of underground culture for a very long time became finally famous. Circumstances of the society, new priorities, new generation of people (geeks) helped to achieve that.

2. The age of iron: For anything which is successful at a macro level in the society come the second generation of people who want benefits of it. First they are the initial « believers » who were living from another activity and wants to live accordingly with their beliefs. It is the first shock and the first softener of the ideology. They have to make compromise with the other markets of the ecosystem. It’s when we start to hear *pragmatic* discourses. Few of them will be successful and then will start bending some rules.

3. The age of industrial revolution: The ecosystem of is here and there are a lot of secondary activities and people. Some people who were not believers but who were just mere employees of the believers. This includes marketers, businessmen, business angels, etc. They want to make a living, they want to invest into it. A lot of tools are available and people using them don’t even know they are the byproduct of this original philosophy. Some people think we have to be careful and keep a minimum of the principles and they organize control organizations (certification, labelling, etc.). It can even reach the legal and political framework of the society.

4. The age of financial market: The original philosophy is gone, the system remains. Some of the original believers think it is a big success for the philosophy. Some getting older became a lot more flexible than when they were young. Some are angry (sometimes very angry) because the principles have been forgotten. They will fork, restart a small group (prehistory) or go on a deserted island and exclude themselves with broken flowers in their dreams.

This happens in many many social groups. Look at organic culture for example, or certain think tanks. It all depends on which levels you want to be, which matters to you. Global or local.