On Wed, Jul 11, 2007 at 12:57:10AM +0200, Kai Grossjohann wrote:
> I used to use Gnus which is a newsreader at heart. Therefore the method
> to organize mail in folders ("groups" in Gnus-speak) was different from
> what I think I need with Mutt.
>
> I'd like to get some ideas from you how you organize your mail.
Here is a mail strategy I refined over 10 years and that serves me well:
- strong spam filter at the postfix level (running my own domain and
mail server), no client-side spam filtering,
- mailing lists are pre-sorted in ~/Maildir/.* folders by procmail, I
check them from time to time with mutt,
- mail from daemons and mailers is procmail'd in a ~/Maildir/junk-admin
folder, infrequently checked,
- mail CC'd to me is procmail'd in a ~/Maildir/.CC folder
- mail BCC'd to me is procmail'd in a ~/Maildir/.BCC folder, as are
replies to my mailing list posts
That way my INBOX only contains messages addressed to me by live
persons. When checking that folder from a low-bandwidth/expensive
connection I can be reasonably sure that it contains only
important/urgent/relevant messages.
My mail clients usually only monitor INBOX, CC and BCC
- once INBOX messages are read they are moved by mutt to a ~/Maildir/.In
folder
- if some message is read but not yet processed I mark it as "important"
(F key) and it stays put until unmarked,
- sent messages are all copied to a ~/Maildir/.Sent folder
.In and .Sent folders are not post-sorted and no longer archived thanks
to the power of mutt's header-cache and limit features.
(procmail recipes available on request)