[2061] in athena10
Re: Mail folder policy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Quentin Smith)
Sun Apr 5 01:20:16 2009
Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 01:19:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: Quentin Smith <quentin@MIT.EDU>
To: Evan Broder <broder@mit.edu>
cc: Greg Price <price@mit.edu>, Tim Abbott <tabbott@mit.edu>,
debathena@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <49D825CE.8020403@mit.edu>
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.10.0904050116410.7699@vinegar-pot.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII
The statistics you reference were collected from outgoing.mit.edu based on
the X-Sender header in each outgoing message. Since pine/alpine doesn't
send an X-Sender header that identifies it, those statistics did not
actually capture the complete set of mail clients.
(i.e. the numbers are wrong.)
I don't remember for sure, but I'm pretty sure that Apple Mail will use a
local Sent and Drafts folder by default. It seems likely to me, in any
case, that most people who regularly use Athena to check their mail will
not also regularly use desktop clients, so we should make the choice that
makes the most sense for Athena.
--Quentin
On Sat, 4 Apr 2009, Evan Broder wrote:
> Hmm...I think your assumptions are a little off there. You seem to be
> thinking only in terms of locker mail clients + Athena/Debathena mail
> clients.
>
> There are also the mail clients that people install and run on their
> laptops to consider. It turns out that if you look at what mail clients
> are being used to access the IMAP servers on a daily basis[1],
> pine/alpine form an absolutely tiny subset of clients on campus. After
> webmail, the popular clients are Outlook/Outlook Express, Apple Mail,
> Thunderbird, Evolution, Eudora, in roughly that order.
>
> I know that Apple Mail and Thunderbird both use Drafts and Sent on the
> server by default (and move deleted messages to Trash).
> Evolution uses Drafts and Sent by default, although I think it stores
> the messages locally.
>
> I have no memory of what Outlook or OE do by default.
>
> Anyway, my point is that you can't assume that alpine is the only
> current client that's storing messages on the IMAP server, because
> that's not the case.
>
> - Evan
>
> [1]
> http://mit.edu/zacheiss/www/MIT%20Evolving%20Email-revtmr-projgroup.ppt
> (from Nov 2007)
>
> Greg Price wrote:
>> The mail should definitely end up in IMAP. Sitting in the Athena
>> homedir makes it completely inaccessible from webmail, the
>> least-common-denominator client.
>>
>> Note that this already means users of the thunderbird locker, if any,
>> will have to move their mail if they want to follow the new config.
>> Users of the sipb locker's mutt, if they have not configured it
>> themselves, have lost their sent mail entirely and have nothing to
>> move.
>>
>> So in that case we might as well make a common location for all the
>> clients. To minimize the impact of tabbott's concern, the common
>> location should probably be the one used by the only client that
>> already sticks the mail in a reasonable location, namely pine/alpine
>> in sent-mail and postponed-msgs.
>>
>> Also, lower-case names are friendlier to people like me, using mutt,
>> who type (or at least tab-complete) them.
>>
>> Greg
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 04, 2009 at 06:33:55PM -0400, Evan Broder wrote:
>>
>>> Does anybody actually have an opinion on this? Because if not, then I'll
>>> just do what I want, which is option 4 (all clients are configured to
>>> store in Sent and Drafts on the IMAP server).
>>>
>>> I'll give people until Thursday to object, at which point I'll declare
>>> consensus and start implementing.
>>>
>>> - Evan
>>>
>>> Evan Broder wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is a hard to avoid problem. As it stands, it's already possible for
>>>> people's sent mail to end up in two different places - they just have to
>>>> send mail from two different clients.
>>>>
>>>> - Evan
>>>>
>>>> Tim Abbott wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> It seems to me that there are transition issues with changing the
>>>>> sent-mail folder from the default, as it would result in any existing
>>>>> users having their sent mail in two different places.
>>>>>
>>>>> Or am I missing something?
>>>>>
>>>>> -Tim Abbott
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, 29 Mar 2009, Evan Broder wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> I started trying to hammer out a config file for Thunderbird, and I'm
>>>>>> kind of unsure about how to deal with mail folders. Different
>>>>>> applications like to put things in different places. In particular,
>>>>>> alpine saves sent mail and drafts on the IMAP server, while Thunderbird
>>>>>> and Evolution both default to saving them within their profiles.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So there are, I guess, four options:
>>>>>> - Configure the MIT mail server, but leave all other folders at their
>>>>>> default
>>>>>> - Configure Evolution and Thunderbird to use IMAP folders for sent and
>>>>>> drafts, but match the local config and use the names "Sent" and "Drafts"
>>>>>> - Configure Evolution and Thunderbird to use IMAP folders with the same
>>>>>> name as alpine uses - "sent-mail" and "postponed-msgs"
>>>>>> - Configure Evolution and Thunderbird to use IMAP folders, and
>>>>>> configure alpine to use their folder names ("Sent" and "Drafts")
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This is a bit of a balancing act between taking a hands-off approach to
>>>>>> configuration vs. making it easy for users to go back and forth between
>>>>>> mail clients. Given those two options, I have a strong preference for
>>>>>> the latter. If someone who usually uses Evolution logs in over ssh and
>>>>>> uses alpine, it seems pretty sucktastic that their sent mail wouldn't
>>>>>> normally be available to them.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Those 4 options are ranked in increasing order of my personal
>>>>>> preference, because I have a preference for the Evolution/TB-style names
>>>>>> over the alpine-style ones, but that's not for any reason other than the
>>>>>> fact that I'm used to them.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Another similar issue to this is what to do when a user deletes a
>>>>>> message - whether to mark them as deleted in the same folder or move
>>>>>> them to a trash folder.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> At this point I have a fairly specific view of how I want /my/ mail
>>>>>> client to act, and I'm having a hard time telling if that's crowding my
>>>>>> design decisions, so I'd appreciate feedback.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> - Evan
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>
