24 Feb
2010
24 Feb
'10
10:08 p.m.
Example:
- I have 100's of sent-mail mailboxes I don't want to be subscribed to, because it is doubtful I will ever use them. These mailboxes are unsubscribed because I don't want to see them in any mailbox listings by default.
This use of subscriptions is a terrible abuse of IMAP. Like most terrible abuses, it's a-ok to choose for yourself if you're an advanced user, but anyone who has done support for a broad user base knows that a client should *NEVER* act like this as the default. Subscriptions are brittle and non-portable and hiding mailboxes based on them leads only to floods of "Where is all my mail you screwed up my life!!!!" interactions.
I'm genuinely confused by this come-back. Could you elaborate?
Why is having subscriptions (and, specifically, some folders to which you are not subscribed) a terrible abuse of IMAP? What is non-portable about subscriptions? The IMAP protocol supports them directly.