Tag discussion: postbox, mailbox, letterbox, etc

Posted under Tags

r0d3n7z

Currently, receptacles for snail mail are broadly divided into:
postbox : outgoing mail -- you deposit, postman collects
mailbox : incoming mail -- postman delivers, you receive

These tag definitions date back to Aug 2011 when I requested in topic #6093 for the two tags to be split up.
Prior to that, receptacles for outgoing/incoming mail were conflated under a single tag.

One issue with these tags is that the words themselves are ambiguous in casual/colloquial use -- the terms are sometimes used with overlap or even interchangeably. Usage may also differ depending on country.
Consequently, I've had to do a bit of occasional maintenance to catch and correct mistaggings.

The reasoning behind my choice of definitions at that time was:
( tl;dr: tag availability, usage survey of wikipedia/google )

Show

Criteria

  • Name should be common usage, not technical/industry jargon (e.g. "customer mail receptacle", ugh)
  • Use generic names, rather than terms that refer to a specific design

For outgoing mail (collection point)
Wikipedia offers the following alternative names:

  • post box / postbox <- Wikipedia primary title. 113 million google search results. image search returns mostly outgoing mail receptacles.
  • collection box <- unambiguous, but jargon -- not commonly used, only 6.9 million google results.
  • mailbox / letter box / drop box <- ambiguous.

Specific designs have their own names, e.g. pillar box , wall box and lamp box but an umbrella tag for all of them is desired, rather than tagging each type separately.
Note: the pillarbox tag was already taken ( aliased to pillarboxed )

Therefore, postbox was selected.

For incoming mail (delivery point)
Wikipedia offers the following alternative names:

  • letter box / letterbox <- Wikipedia primary title. Tag already taken ( aliased to letterboxed )
  • letter plate / letter hole / mail slot <- refers to a specific type/design, i.e. slot in the door, which is not what we want
  • mailbox <- slightly ambiguous.

Since letterbox was unavailable, I looked into mailbox. The wikipedia article contains 139 references to "mailbox" / "mail box", compared to just 28 instances of "letter box" or "letterbox", so it certainly seems usable in this context.

As for potential ambiguity, USPS defines mailbox:
(1) Any private receptacle or container used by customers to receive mail either at their residence or at the curbside.
(2) Informally, any USPS collection box or other USPS mail receptacle.

So at least in the US, it officially/generally refers to delivery points, and may colloquially also refer to collection points.
image search seems support this, it return mostly the stereotype curbside mailbox (e.g. post #1189172), along with other incoming mail receptacles.

Thus, in the absence of other alternatives, mailbox was selected although the term can be somewhat ambiguous.

Now, @Provence has suggested (via dmail) that we could:

the idea here is that letterbox is less likely to be confused with postbox.

I think the rationale is sound, the core questions probably relate more to

  • are folks okay with the de-aliasing, since letterboxed is fairly large (18k posts).
  • both letterbox and letterboxed tags in use, leading to potential confusion, accidental mistagging due to autocomplete, etc

Any thoughts?

Updated by r0d3n7z

Reply
ion288

Is letterbox really less likely to confuse people?

Not only will people mix it up with postbox but also with letterboxed.

The problem is that all these terms are used interchangeably in different parts of the US. We would need to change the English language to avoid confusion here and that is slightly beyond the scope of this site.

Reply
user 525419

ion288 said:

Is letterbox really less likely to confuse people?

Not only will people mix it up with postbox but also with letterboxed.

I don' think there is a problem with letterboxed. This may have been a problem when this alias was created, but the tags have developed since then and letterboxed is fairly common.
Or we can make the tag with an underscore which would be "letter box" then. That way we don't have to unalias.

Letter box, however, is less likely to get confused with post box since both terms describe only one term while mailbox describes multiples things.

Updated by user 525419

Reply
user 441999

+1 to letterbox_(object).

Incidentally, if someone said the word "mailbox" to me, then unless I had good reason to believe otherwise I would assume they were talking about an email inbox. Which is a third thing which that term can describe.

Reply
r0d3n7z

mass update mailbox -> letterbox_(object)

Link to request

So this looks like the way to go?

mailbox would then be marked as ambiguous, wiki updated to discourage its use, and provide disambiguation links to help refer people to the correct tags.

postbox vs letterbox_(object) still isn't completely unambiguous, but it should be an improvement.

EDIT: The bulk update request #1515 (forum #143986) has been approved by @NWF_Renim.

Updated by a moderator

Reply
NWF Renim

-1. As a native of the US, having mailbox as an empty tag is going to be an endless source of annoyance. In general we should try and stick to North American English, simply due to general consistency of terminology for the overall site.

I think it might make more sense to consider renaming "postbox" to say "mail_drop_box". This accomplishes the goals of (a) making it appear in the autocomplete when you start typing mailbox and (b) the "drop" part implies the fact that you're leaving (for ongoing mail) instead of receiving mail from it.

Reply
user 525419

NWF_Renim said:

-1. As a native of the US, having mailbox as an empty tag is going to be an endless source of annoyance. In general we should try and stick to North American English, simply due to general consistency of terminology for the overall site.

I think it might make more sense to consider renaming "postbox" to say "mail_drop_box". This accomplishes the goals of (a) making it appear in the autocomplete when you start typing mailbox and (b) the "drop" part implies the fact that you're leaving (for ongoing mail) instead of receiving mail from it.

The point isn't to abandon American English but the point is to make things less ambigous. It helps no one when we keep using AE terms when they are ambigous.

Reply
r0d3n7z

NWF_Renim said:
we should try and stick to North American English

What Provence said. "mailbox" is ambiguous in the US, and even moreso elsewhere. That's not desirable, which is why we're hoping to change it.

If you take issue with mailbox returning no results, we could instead do
　 alias mailbox -> letterbox_(object)
or even
　 alias mailbox -> letterbox_(incoming_mail)
which maintains the ability to search and tag with it.

This (especially the latter) will be most effective at catching the attention of a user who is about to mistag an outgoing mail receptacle with "mailbox", as autocomplete will clearly show something they didn't expect.

NWF_Renim said:
consider renaming "postbox" to say "mail_drop_box". This accomplishes the goals of (a) making it appear in the autocomplete when you start typing mailbox and (b) the "drop" part implies the fact that you're leaving (for ongoing mail) instead of receiving mail from it.

This is less effective at preventing mistaggings. Someone who believes they are correctly applying "mailbox" for outgoing mail is not as likely to pay attention to an unfamiliar alternative when they have "successfuly" found their "correct" tag.

Furthermore, I don't think it's appropriate to rename the postbox tag from a more widely-used term to a less common one. It'd be more appropriate use aliases, e.g.:
　 alias collection_box / mail_collection_box -> postbox
or even switch to postbox_(outgoing_mail) if we want to go all the way in mistagging prevention in both directions.

I'd prefer to stay clear of "dropbox"/"drop_box" because of the association with the personal cloud service/software.

Reply
NWF Renim

r0d3n7z said:

What Provence said. "mailbox" is ambiguous in the US, and even moreso elsewhere. That's not desirable, which is why we're hoping to change it.

If you take issue with mailbox returning no results, we could instead do
　 alias mailbox -> letterbox_(object)
or even
　 alias mailbox -> letterbox_(incoming_mail)
which maintains the ability to search and tag with it.

This (especially the latter) will be most effective at catching the attention of a user who is about to mistag an outgoing mail receptacle with "mailbox", as autocomplete will clearly show something they didn't expect.

Letterbox is actually a poor replacement for mailbox, because the assumption is that letterbox is used specifically for incoming mail, while mailbox is used for both. That's actually not true (external link 1 and external link 2). Given that it also then has conflict with the letterboxing, it suffers from worse ambiguity than mailbox does. Given this, at it's best it's at par with using the term mailbox, which makes it a NA English vs UK English issue, which would mean defaulting to NA terminology, and at it's worse letterbox is the inferior of the two choices due to ambiguity.

After thinking more, I'd use "mail_collection_box" as well, as I had more time to check, and that is what USPS officially refers to them. I'm fine with having the tag alias with postbox, since eitherway it'll appear when typing up with the term mail. As for collection box, I'd be against that proposal due to concerns that it could potentially be confused with donation_box.

Reply
r0d3n7z

NWF_Renim said:

Letterbox is actually a poor replacement for mailbox, because the assumption is that letterbox is used specifically for incoming mail, while mailbox is used for both. That's actually not true

I don't believe it was ever assumed or asserted that "letterbox" is a perfectly unambiguous term.
If you'd looked inside my spoilered reasoning in OP, it is listed as an alternative term given by wikipedia for "postbox".
I also remarked earlier that:

postbox vs letterbox_(object) still isn't completely unambiguous, but it should be an improvement.

I'm well aware that both terms are ambiguous; the question, is whether one term is possibly less ambiguous than the other.

Deciding this is tricky, since everyone's views on this are going to be colored by whichever terminology/usage they're more familiar with.
"Appeal to dictionary" does not work, since the issue arises from the terms being used interchangeably / with overlap in informal/colloquial usage.

My initial heuristic was based on wikipedia:
- the primary article titles are post box and letter box
- both "mailbox" and "letter box" are listed as alternate names for "post box" in that article
- mailbox requires a disambiguation page; besides incoming/outgoing mail receptacles, it is also used for email and other contexts.

So, it appears Wikipedia preferred "letter box" as the less ambiguous term, for use as the primary article title.

Of course, we have our own additional conflict with letterboxed -- which is precisely why I'd initially settled upon postbox and mailbox as the current tags in use.

-----

We're having this conversation because Provence
- thought that "mailbox" was too ambiguous and considered "letter box" or some variation thereof to be better
- believed letterboxed may be well established enough that the existing letterbox -> letterboxed alias could be freed up if necessary
- objects to the lack of discussion in topic #6093 -- I'd unilaterally researched, decided the tags, and written their wiki pages
so I was happy to initiate and facilitate a discussion.

Presently:
- it is clear that the the letterbox -> letterboxed alias is not going away, so any variant of "letter box" is going to require a qualifier.
- not clear if possible to arrive at a consensus as to whether "mailbox" or "letter box" is less ambiguous (futile?)
- in any case, "mailbox" and "letter box" are both ambiguous terms

That last point means that I'm probably going to have to continue babysitting these tags anyways, unless we adopt *_(incoming_mail) and *_(outgoing_mail) qualifiers.
Would that be a better way to accomplish the goal of clearer disambiguation, or does it seem too unwieldy?

-----

I'd use "mail_collection_box" as well, as I had more time to check, and that is what USPS officially refers to them.

Exactly. ( For anyone else interested to check the official USPS usage of various terms: look here )

As for collection box, I'd be against that proposal due to concerns that it could potentially be confused with donation_box.

Good point.

Reply
user 525419

That last point means that I'm probably going to have to continue babysitting these tags anyways, unless we adopt *_(incoming_mail) and *_(outgoing_mail) qualifiers.

Only quoting this part since I therwise agree with you, but this doesn't that bad since then the tags are becoming very intuitive for usage.

Reply
NWF Renim

We can probably go ahead and unalias letterbox -> letterboxed, and replace it with a letterbox_(technique) -> letterboxed alias to free up the letterbox tag.

Using the qualifiers, would that be using like mailbox_(incoming_mail) and postbox_(outgoing_mail), or would postbox be going with an alias of mailbox_(outgoing_mail) -> postbox?

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