On Friday, March 3 at 10:59 AM, quoth Derek Martin:
Ignoring the issue of storing duplicate messages taking up extra space, how is sharing IMAP folders better than simply creating mailing lists and putting the right people on the right lists? I can't see any practical benefit to it...
Well, there is the issue of single-instance-store. A message in a shared folder only has to be stored on disk once, where a message delivered by mailing list has to be stored as many times as there are recipients.
- You never have to worry that one user accidentally deletes a message before everyone else has had a chance to see it.
This can be accomplished by simply disallowing deletes from the shared mailbox.
- If a particular user doesn't need to see mail on a particular list, they can just unsubscribe from it.
User doesn’t need to check a mailbox he doesn’t want to read.
- If a particular user doesn't need to see mail on a particular list TODAY, they can just delete it all to get it out of their way without affecting everyone else.
Hmm, this seems like an organizational issue. macro index \ct "<limit>~r `date +%d/%m/%y`<enter>"
- Users can organize their mail into folders using methods that make the most sense for they way they work individually, rather than being forced to live with the group-defined organization.
I would imagine <copy-message> can be used to the same effect.
- If a user DOES accidentally delete a mail, there should be plenty of other people who have a copy of it, and can forward the message to the user who goofed.
Again, don’t let people delete mail from the shared folder.
- You don't have the problem of having 50,000 messages lying around that no one cares about, just because someone MIGHT care about them (but probably won't).
Delete messages older than X days, tell people to make copies of messages they wish to keep as reference.
Except for the space issue, which should be a non-issue if you're an ISP (cuz you need lots of space for storing user mail anyway), I can't see a single benefit to sharing folders. I'm curious if you have found any.
I imagine it could be used as an efficient and handy reference for things like “the last month worth of filtered daily log files” or something like that. Something where most folks who would need to be on a mailing list would probably not care most of the time, but would occasionally still want the reference. Yes, that could also be done with some sort of webserver, but doing it via shared folder isn’t an absolutely horrible method either (plus you don’t have to implement all the fancy searching and filtering for the webserver that people may want for viewing because such things already in most mail readers).
Another idea might be to use a shared folder as a sort of group to-do list where the things that need to be accomplished are posted and then deleted when they’re done.
~Kyle --It is precisely because it is fashionable for Americans to know no science, even though they may be well educated otherwise, that they so easily fall prey to nonsense.
-- Isaac Asimov
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