I’ve sent these suggestions to Google, but I keep getting back an automated response saying they’re too busy to listen to feedback. (What kind of beta is that?) This is what I need for Gmail to be more then just a dumping zone for a handful of mailing lists.

I need to be able to:

  • permanently archive (or delete) conversations. I frequently archive conversations because I’m not interested in them. Then the next person responds, and its back in my inbox. Arrggh! And of course the least interesting threads, are always the most active. Give my a permanent archive please.
  • better mailing list support. The threaded view is excellent, as long as I’m not mixing my personal email in with the lists everything is fine. However once I’ve got list traffic, and personal traffic combined things go down hill, fast. In particular Gmail filters aren’t smart enough to match on arbitrary header fields so its very difficult to filter list. I want
    • a filter rule which is smart enough to auto-detect lists
    • ditto a search rule (e.g. search “list:delicious-discuss foo”)

    Some of this might be achievable using virtual mailboxes (kellan+somelist@gmail.com), haven’t tried because I’m forwarding my mail to gmail, not putting that address out explicitly.

That would be a start. Myother feature request, to have roles like in pine where I can spoof the from field isn’t likely to be implemented.