Posted by on September 6, 2010

Ok, Gmail, you’re halfway there: you’ve got labels, and you can detect mailing lists (Google Groups ones, anyway). Now, take it a bit further:

1. Automatically create a label for every group that I receive mail from. Don’t wait for me to do it.
2. Make these labels more than just a label. Give them options like “skip the inbox” or “delete on sight”.
3. Have a view which shows all mail from all mailing lists, with some smart options to make this even more useful.

For extra credit:

4. Detect other sources of regular mail which are not “mailing lists” as such. Newsletters from the bank. Quarterly updates from my alma mater. Treat them exactly the same.

Most of the features are already there, but it’s so tedious having to set up a special rule and label for every single list.