** DONE Label-dependencies with Google Mail                  :blog:suderei:pim:google:emails:research:
CLOSED: [2011-06-18 Sat 12:21]
:PROPERTIES:
:NUMBER_OF_COMMENTS: 0
:PUBDATE: Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:21:26 +0200
:ID: Label-dependencies-with-Google-Mail
:CREATED: [2011-06-18 Sat 12:21]
:END:
:LOGBOOK:
- State "DONE"       from "NEXT"       [2011-06-18 Sat 12:21]
:END:

[[http://mail.google.com][Google Mail (GMail)]] offers the feature to nest a new label
(Google-Gmail-speak for "tag") under another one. You get there
following this path:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
    Gmail > Mail settings > Labels > "Create new label" > "Nest Label under:"
#+END_EXAMPLE

With this feature, you can define a label "sports" and nest another
label "volleyball" under it. Then you get "sports" and
"sports/volleyball" respectively.

---------------

[[http://karl-voit.at/temp/suderei/2011-06-18_GMail_logo.png"]]

Unfortunately Google has mixed two different concepts which results in
bad usability: wrong behavior expectance.

When you are thinking of the concept of labels or tags, you probably get
the following idea: whenever I label anything with "sports/volleyball",
I expect to see those items (emails) also in "sports" since "volleyball"
is a refinement of "sports".

When you are prefer to think of folders, you will get the expectance to
find things stored in "sports/volleyball" only there.

Consider following situation:

labeled with "sports": "My sports plan.txt"\\
 labaled with "sports/volleyball": "Beachvolleyball schedule.txt"\\

This is, what you see in Gmail interface with current implementation:

contained in "sports": "My sports plan.txt"\\
 contained in "sports/volleyball": "Beachvolleyball schedule.txt"\\

This is, what you might expect from a label point of view:

contained in "sports": "My sports plan.txt" and "Beachvolleyball
schedule.txt"\\
 contained in "sports/volleyball": "Beachvolleyball schedule.txt"\\

Google tried to combine both worlds as they stated in a [[http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1754199][very
interesting whitepaper]]. They designed the web interface of Gmail to
satisfy people from the "folder-world" and people from the
"label-world". This works pretty good so far. Until they start to
break the metapher for the "label-world-people" by introducing
hierarchical structures.

The logical concept of hierarchies with folders differs from the logical
concept of hierarchies withing labels. Different folders always mean
different contents. But labels that are super-labels of other labels
mean the combined set of items labeled with all sub-labels and the
super-label.

Another example of how hierarchical structures conflict with modern
information handling.




-------------------------

Note: this blog entry was originally authored using [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity_%28software%29][Serendipity]]
and converted to Org-mode format for publicvoit via a dumb script.
This may result in bad format or even lost content.
Please write a comment if you want to get in touch with me so that I can try to fix things.