there’s this thought that runs through my head every now and then:
is there a point to cleaning up old email?
i mean sure, there are finite limits, especially imposed on work account on work email servers. but that stuff either you have a business justification that it needs or doesn’t need to be kept around. or you can just archive it to some work storage area.
but how about personal emails? you keep them around, thinking, these are valuable correspondences to/from me, i need to have them around, in case i want to go back and read over them, to remember something or for nostalgia’s sake. but how often do you actually do this? in the past year? how about mail from two or even three years ago? worse yet are mails in a different file or email format than you’re using now, due to having changed computers or mail programs (e.g. outlook express to eudora to thunderbird). are you really going to try and go through those, given that it’s even more of a pain in the ass to try to find something to open up and read those files?
and how about mail from chat lists? just people in some e-community you’re in talking about whatever topic of the day/week/month, current goings on, where to buy the best toothbrush, what color are your socks today.
so why keep this shit at all?
then again, this adds up to what, 200, 300, maybe 500MB? that’s less than a cd-r. hell, since it’s text, if you compress it in a archive, maybe it’s less than 150MB.
for that much, who cares? so why do i keep thinking about it?
Posted at February 11, 2004 7:07 AMi think about this a lot. I’m sort of a pack rat for correspondance - especially between me and family, close friends, and at work.
Saving email at work is dangerous. My friend Randy the lawyer makes sure he saves approximately 0% of his mail. Because he’s a lawyer. The biggest innovation in corporate lawsuits in the last ten years has been email. Saved emails are everyone’s favorite tool now in court. Best to delete everything.
I’m not as worried about it at home, but privacy is important to me in general. I keep all my mail encrypted now on my computer. So if I loose my laptop I won’t have to worry about joe shmoe reading about my whole life through correspondence.
But I hear your ‘cleaning house’ view as well, do I just pile up crap like a full closet I never look through; or do I try to stay simple and tidy. I think keeping my address book up to date lately has helped, I feel like it’s less important to me to keep old emails if my address book is fresh and updated.
Posted by: Davee Evans at February 15, 2004 12:45 PMComments are now closed for this entry. Thank you for playing.