GChat – Why ‘Never Show’ is Not Removing a User

You will first need to separate the messages that you want to keep from those you want to delete.

I'm not sure I understood the question entirely, but there are a few methods to do this:

• Use a search query to filter on those that you want to keep (e.g. label:list from:me), then either use this query negated in the next step, or star/label these messages.
• Go through the 60K+ messages manually. As you do so, you should either star them or add them to a label.
• Search for messages that you know you want to keep based on keywords and manually mark them with a star or label. As you do this, you should negate those that have already been selected to keep the list small. So for example, if you know that a message you want to keep has the words "save this", you would run "save this" -is:starred, then select the messages and star them.
• You might already have the messages in a specific label, in which case you are ready for the next step.

Now you can simply run a query to select all those messages you want to delete and subtract those that you want to keep. Simply run a query such as: label:list -is:starred. Next, select all the messages in the list (you will need to tell Gmail to select all messages not just the first 20 by clicking the link above the list of messages). Once all of them are selected, you can simply delete them.

In case you want to use a label instead of stars, simply use -label:foo instead of -is:starred in your query.

There are currently 3 basic ways to reject unwanted messages in gmail:

1. Mark as Spam

   Unlike your belief, you can safely mark anything you consider slightly annoying or unrequested as a spam. And you should do it. I've marked mails directly from my primary contacts as spam, and never lost any important mail because of that. Just to illustrate to your specific case, gmail even offers an automatic unsubscribe feature for some lists if you click on Mark as spam. Should the worst happen and you find legitimate messages on the spam folder, there are fixes for that, such as adding their e-mail to your contacts or using filters.

2. Filter

   If you can come up with a simple enough rule that will work for your sample, you can safely create a filter. If you have any doubts, instead of throwing stuff to trash, set a label and archive the message, so you can review the filter later on. Simple stuff.

3. Priority Inbox

   That's even more magical. In my case, it was almost useless because I've been using the first two features and activating it didn't help much. But it's great nevertheless. Just set it up, try it and see if it's a fit. The whole idea behind it is exactly what you've requested: reject unwanted messages that you don't want to send to spam or trash. Maybe it's a mail list you subscribed yourself. You can rank it as unimportant, if gmail didn't already did it, and it will stay on your inbox for further review.