On 8. Jun 2020, at 0.23, Scott A. Wozny <sawozny@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear Dovecot Gurus,

Setting up my first IMAP server and looking at the folder structure, I had a mailbox I built on a Dovecot server and a mailbox configured by a hosting provider next to each other in Thunderbird and I noticed that the special use folders (Drafts, Trash and Sent) in my default-ish (I did set them to auto = subscribe) Dovecot install make these folders appear parallel to my Inbox folder where my hosting provider’s default configuration has them under the Inbox hierarchically, along with all the folders I built for mail storage over the use of the account.

I did some googling, but I cannot find any guidance on which of these is preferred, why, or how they could be controlled in Dovecot. The default Dovecot config is ambiguous (IMHO) in that the mailbox config elements are children to the inbox namespace (implying they go under Inbox in the hierarchy) but their special_use parameter names are \Name which (if you use a UNIX filesystem paradigm) implies they should be at the root of the hierarchy and, therefore, parallel with Inbox, which is how Thunderbird shows them, but I’m not sure if that’s a mail client decision and not anything to do with the server configuration.

Since I can’t access the config of my hosting provider, I can’t make any comparisons, so I thought I’d ask on the list if there is any standard guidance on server side configuration of special use folders in Dovecot or if there’s no guidance available because I’m overthinking this. :)

It's totally up to you. What ever you prefer. Some people put special use folders into root, some put them under INBOX. That is why special_use exists so that server can tell clients which folders are for special use.

Sami