Re: IMAP extensions needed for SPAM/HAM and WHITE/BLACK listing

[Ned Freed <ned.freed@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> On Mon, 2009-07-06 at 11:00 -0700, Ned Freed wrote:
> > If there's a reason multiple folders can't be marked this way I sure
> > don't
> > know what it is.

> You're right -- I didn't parse what you were saying correctly the first
> time around.

> But if your concern is adoption rates, a keyword-only solution will get
> wider take-up than something that requires support for annotations. (And
> from a purely engineering standpoint, the simplest solution wins.)

My concern isn't adoption rate. Rather, my concern is, as someone who provides
server software, how I can offer a better user experience in regards to spam.

Suppose I implement spam filter retraining based on setting of flags. how well
this works, or whether it works at all, depends entirely on the client people
use. And past experience on client uptake of new features like this is best
described as "lousy".

Now suppose I implement this with folder annotations. I'm in business
immediately. Things just work no matter what client people use.

There is, of course, the issue of setting the annotation on the proper folder
and  having a client to do that. But this isn't as much of a problem as it
sounds. Since the annotation only has to be set once, it can be done through a
simple web page, or better still, make it an option in the webmail interface.
(Everyone has a webmail interface these days.) And in many cases even this is
unnecessary, because many service providers predesignate a folder as the spam
folder.

The only way I could get behind a flag-based solution is if there really was an
common set of ad-hoc flag choices already in use by all the major clients - not
a couple, all. But I don't believe that's the case.

We've had to choose between client and server side solutions many times in the
past, and in almost every case the conclusion has been server side solutions
are a deployment win. I really wish this weren't true - I wish clients would
pick up new capabilities in a more timely fashion - but that's just not how
things work.

				Ned