[accomplice]

As a way to send information is email unsurpassed, however from the receivers perspective the signal to noise ratio quickly favors noise.. and by that time it is difficult to adjust.

The real failing is that the interaction paradigms for tuning the noise to signal ratio are extremely manual and difficult to verify if it has been adjusted or filtered properly once set.

I could be as easy as choosing who I care about, what I care about, and when I care about it.. but instead we are forced to set up smart filters, formulas etc and assume that we wont miss anything important.

Also, 5 clicks to unsubscribe is another kind of fail altogether that makes pruning the inbox time consuming and hardly worth the effort when compared to just letting the spam, coupon pepper your real communications. Wouldn't it be nice if email automatically park those offers on a side bar? ..along with the rest of the no-replies? Keeping the conversations and action items front and center.