dennie kirtley's dashboard

too bad - I really needed that link, but no big. I have another suggestion. A one click send feature. Since I mostly mail myself links, slingalink serves as sort of a notebook for me. It would be nice to not have to put my email address there each time. Anyway to set up a default email address?

Just as with email spamming causing a huge email bloating problem, there is yet another even more sinister problem lurking in your Gmail.

I have searched for this and seemingly no one else has thought to describe this, so here is the problem in original form. Most people have their gmail set to automatically include a copy of the email being replied to, and if two people do this back and forth enough times, you could theoretically bloat a gmail conversation up to megabyte levels.

Mathematically here is what an original plus 11 generations of response in conversation looks like, assuming that you include a copy of the original in each reply, seemingly the default for most users.

Original conversation = A
email 1 = A + B
email 2 = A + B + C
email 3 = A + B + C + D
email 4 = A + B + C + D + E
email 5 = A + B + C + D + E + F
email 6 = A + B + C + D + E + F + G
email 7 = A + B + C + D + E + F + G + H
email 8 = A + B + C + D + E + F + G + H + I
email 9 = A + B + C + D + E + F + G + H + I + J
email 10 = A + B + C + D + E + F + G + H + I + J + K
email 11 = A + B + C + D + E + F + G + H + I + J + K + L

If the amt of txt in each email is roughly the same, for purposes of argument here, let us assign the amt of 1K to each response, the above looks like

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 = 78k

the formula is (n/2 * n) + n/2

thus, a 24 generation email is not just double the amount of text. It is an exponential multiplier.

(12 * 24) + 12 = 300k

a 36th generation threaded Gmail becomes the dreaded mark of the beast
(18 * 36) + 18 = 666k

With each succeeding email response in this chain, we pay an additonal compounding of interest. This is a dreadful situation, and since Gmail is footing the storage costs for 100 million plus users at 7 Gigs of storage per person, this maths out to 700 Million GIGS of storage, or 700,000 1 TB hard drives. At 100 dollars a pop, even if they use compression, the extra storage Gmail must pay and maintain for Gmail Conversation Bloat by definition, becomes a major budget item and bottom line eater. I can foresee the day when some bright Gmail engineer reads this post and and then calculates the actual dollar cost of GCB, she (it will be for sure a woman) is going to go "My Goddess, WHAT WERE WE THINKING??"

Now this is just looking at STORAGE. What about all the TIME one must spend wading through all that text clutter needlessly? We have all of us experienced having to plow through the multiple generations of the same email text while looking for a specific piece of info that is certainly in there.... somewhere, but where? At some pts, a nice google search breaks down. You are looking for an IDEA and you don't know what it looks like, therefore Google search is useless, therefore you must open that long threaded conversation and READ and READ and READ.

A review of a 12th gen email review looks like:
response 1 must be read 12 times
response 2 must be read 11 times
response 3 must be read 10 times
response 4 must be read 9 times
response 5 must be read 8 times
response 6 must be read 7 times
response 7 must be read 6 times
response 8 must be read 5 times
response 9 must be read 4 times
response 10 must be read 3 times
response 11 must be read 2 times
response 12 must be read 1 time

(and at the risk of being painfully obvious, for the last entry of 36 generations, even though you could theoretically read response 1, 36 times and response 2 - 35 times.... etc, at some pt you just give up. You are not going to find the meaning. What 'gmail threading' promised was informational organization BUT what it has actually given us INFO BABBLE.

I am no bean counter but THIS threatens to become a problem of global magnitude. It is so outrageously and stupidly obvious that this is a serious problem, especially so in large corporations, man-per-minute-cost multiplied out by thousands can be incredibly significant costs. We are talking wasted man hours, information management, and blah blah blah. This is mathematical greenhouse gas being farted out, a nightmare of redundant ones and zeroes polluting our perception, adding to our stress level and probably even somehow contributing to global warming once electric power for all that wasted hard drive storage is taken into account. We are at a tipping pt on this planet. It would sad to know that email bloat was the thing that did us in finally.

But seriously, this is logistically not so hard a problem to phish out. My original concept is to create either a user script or even better, a new Gmail feature. It is called Gmail Conversation "bloat killer" or GCBK for short.

The Gmail Conversation Debloater, for those less mathematically inclined, does the following.

12th generation conversation reduces from 78K to 12K
24th generation conversation reduces from 300K to 24K
36th generation conversation reduces from 600K to 36K

Nice hmmm? And just think of all the time saved from not having to read copies of the first message umpteen times.

Specifically what "Gmail bloat killer" or GCBK does is the following.

1, You invoke the script on a per conversation basis.
2, Once activated, it opens the specified conversation thread
3, It makes a comparison and finds all the duplication.
4, It deletes all text that has been repeated.
5, If this proves too difficult to do, an alternative is for the script to just hide the repeated text sections. This doesn't cure the mathematical email pollution but it sure would make reading through long threads a lot easier.

Now, all you brilliant women programmers out there, you KNOW who you are - I hope one of you reads this and writes this incredibly brilliant script which will make ALL LIFE ON EARTH EASIER, but especially for us Gmailers.

Google I hope you are you reading this. Because if you do not do this, Yahoo certainly will. I would go to work for either of you. The above is just a small demo. I am sure you know how to find me. Voila!

Dennie Kirtley