With GMail, it is better to reduce noise by searching unvanted people and keywords and mark them automatically as read. Then it is simple to to keep inbox clean, but still the filtering is not final solution, but they can be always unfiltered, if needed.
Brief instruction to filter noise: 1) From: jounivalkonen OR jabowery OR etc. (all the uninteresting people, separate email addresses with 'OR' to create filter for several people) 2) To: [email protected] 3) select 'Create filter with this search' 4) tick 'mark as read' 5) tick 'Also apply filter to 500 matching conversations.' 6) select 'Create filter' This filters emails that come directly from unwanted people. Then create second filter to search message body from unwanted key words. 1) To: [email protected] 2) includes the words: jounivalkonen OR jabowery OR bowery OR Jouni OR Valkonen OR etc. (all the uninteresting words associated to unwanted messages, separate words with 'OR' to apply it several people simultaneously. Of course, be careful with common names, such as James) 3) select 'Create filter with this search' 4) tick 'mark as read' 5) tick 'Also apply filter to 900 matching conversations.' 6) select 'Create filter' This way it is good to filter unwanted noise, but it is not too harsh, because noise is not diverted into trash bin or bypassed inbox. Although messages are not usually read using this filter, at least they are noted. So it makes possible to return them occasionally if necessary. –Jouni On Nov 27, 2011 8:33 PM, "James Bowery" <[email protected]> wrote: > > Oh, I almost forgot: For gmail, the action to take upon filter match is "delete". Others won't get rid of the noise. > > On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 12:32 PM, James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Although the "kill file" approach doesn't work due to responses, one can use email filters such as gmail's to filter not only on the "from" field but on words that occur in the body of the message. >> The increase in signal to noise ratio is a pleasure.
