Electronic interaction

[jack]

Currently, when lj comments arrive in my mail, they are shunted into a directory with a flag that says "need to read/reply" (in fact, a gmail "star") which is taken off when I've read them, or when I've replied to them if I need to.

Emails that arrive are treated similarly, except the flag is "inbox". (Though if I had many more, I'd need a more complicated system.)

Currently my "todo" list is separate from my email, but for some people they aren't, and emails are tagged with "deal with on [date]".

Would it be useful if, if it was your comment/email, you could see whether I had done that?:

(a) Cool
(b) Ick, you've invented microsoft "read receipts"
(c) Nice idea, but doesn't really help.
(d) Nice idea, but it needs to be clearly optional, I need to be able to move stuff around without sending off notifications to anywhere or anything
(e) Yes, but not email, it only works if you share a project/database/server, and anyway, this only makes sense for specific projects you're working on together, for which you should have some management software, rather than trying to do everyting in email.

Comments

I don't see how it's implementable though.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It'd probably only really work where both email clients cooperated. (Again like microsoft's, unfortunately). Ideally it would be workable or at least non-detremental if only one did though. Perhaps headers indicating "This email needs no response" or "this email needs an ack" or "this email needs a reply". I mean, in theory we can do that with politeness and etiquette, but often I don't have a good way of telling someone I don't have time now but I'll get to them, but clicking a button to say "wait" would be within my grasp.