This message is a followup of 2 topics (2 waves in fact) on Google Wave: [Empty Waves] and [Metaphors for common types of wavelets] (links only works for dev preview sandbox account holders. This post is originally a wave and will continue without integration for now. I did not change anything in this blog post besides this fist explanation)

Please, do not edit this wave as it’s meant for discussion and not for collaboration .

Please, no gadgets or robots here also.

Speaking of metaphors, the “Inbox” term can be a little missplaced in Google Wave. The default itemsin the navigation sidebar could be replaced thinking “outside the box”, like Stephany says in her talks about Google Wave.

The Inbox metaphor is part of an old methodology. Inbox is a place for printed documents that was brought to you. Your first task is to read it, your second task is some action against what you’ve read. Outbox is a place where you put printed documents for others to take care of (both delivery and tasks implied). In e-mail the metaphor was extended to have the Sent Items, which is merely a convention for logging what you delegated, assigned or communicated to someone. Trash is also part of this. It’s the end of something that doesn’t need to come back.

Melissa Stevens said in the [Empty Waves] topic:

[In Google Wave] There is a strong instinct to publish to the world and get responses (like a discussion group or blog) without understanding, or taking advantage of the fact that every blip is a separate document in the wave and every person that you invite is an equal collaborator (able to append, edit, or delete parts of the document).

On the other hand, when dealing with the Inbox, Wave suddenly does seem a lot more like email. Suddenly all that “publish to the world” stuff takes on the characteristics of spam. Because I can choose not to read a blog or a discussion group but I’m forced to deal with my email Inbox even if it’s just to move things to Trash or to Mute them.

Google Wave team was very clever completely remove the outbox (following Gmail’s lead to “feel” instantaneous) and also renamed the Sent items to “By me”. Here interactions can be created by me, sant by me, edited, contributed, published, etc. As we can see many people want their inbox cleared as asap. Is this to be blamed on the Inbox metaphor? Is this only a matter of the wave-discuss mixing too much cultures? I think the second is less likely.

Also in Google Wave the waves come back from trash without an action. Even the “Recicle” icon some OSs use for the trash is not in place for waves. You can mute a wave and that is even worse then trashing it. Have you noticed that if you mute some conversation you’re spected to read that you may be ignoring someone explicitly asking your opinion in the future? This is exactly why things come back from the trash: there are dangerous situations you can be in if you ignore someone that’s not supposed to be ignored. Isn’t mutted a better navigation menu to be in place of the Trash?

I have some, but not many ideas to answer all this questions.

Do you have any?