Thunderbird

Patrick O'Callaghan pocallaghan at gmail.com
Fri Jun 6 15:30:46 UTC 2008


On Fri, 2008-06-06 at 08:04 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-06-06 at 15:52 +0100, Anne Wilson wrote:
> > On Friday 06 June 2008 15:22:03 Craig White wrote:
> > > .I really don't like default configuration of
> > > IMAP client applications that 'MOVE' mail into a 'Deleted Items' or
> > > 'Trash' folder when the user clicks delete. I find many users never
> > > 'empty the trash' (or EXPUNGE) and the mail just sits there.
> > 
> > First, I make sure that deletion goes to the IMAP server's trash, not to 
> > local.  Then I put a 30 day expiry in kmail on all messages over 30 days but 
> > not flagged Important.  That moves them to the server's Trash.  I have a 60 
> > day expiry on the trash.  If I haven't needed it by then I'm pretty certain I 
> > won't need it at all :-)
> > 
> > There have been times, just a few, when I couldn't find the message I wanted 
> > to refer back to, and have found them in the Trash folder.  Belt, 
> > braces/suspenders and a bit of string :-)
> ----
> The issue isn't knowledgeable users like yourself but rather the
> opposite...un-knowledgeable users.
> 
> That said...you are opting for your client application (Kmail) to manage
> things that a more robust IMAP server like cyrus-imapd can handle by
> itself and when you have a lot of users, it's too painful to get them to
> manage their settings when you can handle things like this on an
> administrator level.
> 
> I have one customer with a fair number of users in the office...all of
> whom use IMAP except for the owner who insists on using POP3 and has
> several thousand deleted e-mails in his 'Trash' sort of just in
> case...It's a real PITA because he's using Entourage (Macintosh) and
> like Outlook...it stores everything in one file and when it crosses the
> 4 Gb file size...it implodes. People do strange things with e-mail.

Then there are the users who only check their mail once in a blue moon
and whose mailboxes fill up, but you can't delete anything because who
knows what it is? And then they complain that mail isn't arriving
(because they're over quota). We actually had to implement a patch to
our webmail (IMP) to allow them to delete -- really delete, not just
mark -- everything in their Inbox that arrived before a specific date.
As you say, people have strange expectations of email. It would be fun
to collect war stories of this sort :-)

poc




More information about the fedora-list mailing list