303140 - new concept: ignored mail (run filters after n hours when a mail was received)

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Filters, enhancement)

Description

[Giovanni Derks]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050721 Firefox/1.0.6 (Ubuntu package 1.0.6)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050721 Firefox/1.0.6 (Ubuntu package 1.0.6)


This is a new concept that I never saw on another e-mail client (but I mainly
use thunderbird, so..) that could be very useful imho expecially for busy users..

Let's say that you have just received a lot of e-mails and you have few time to
read them and maybe answer.. so you read only 3 mails and reply back to 1.. the
other e-mail stay there, unread...
then you get even more email and you forgot about the old one.. cause they are
less important.. (for example, a mail from a newsletter).

In a such situation it would be useful to have thunderbird set these email as
ignored. Use should be able to set options like "set e-mail as ignored if I
don't read them in X hours after I downloaded it". Once the e-mail is marked as
ignored it would be useful to generate an event that can act like a filter:

when a mail is (automatically) marked as ignored user should choose to do (or not):
- move it to the X folder
- mark the mail as read
- set the text/background color to (or set a label)
- mark the mail as junk
- delete the mail

this could also be extended in a way in wich e-mail have more "ignore" states:
- after 1 hour - ignore "level 1" -> do action(s)
- after 3 hours - ignore "level 2" -> do action(s)


I think (but I could be badly wrong) that would a cool feature and also not so
hard to implement..

bye,
Giovanni.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Adam Guthrie]

You contradict yourself. You say that you read 3 of the messages, but the other
two sit there unread. By default, messages are marked as read as soon as you
open them. So they should all be marked as read if you open (and presumably read
them too). 

If you haven't read them, they will be bold. This is sufficient enough in my
opinion. If you're proposing that we mark messages as ignored if you have read
them, but haven't replied to them, then that's a whole nother issue.

Comment 2

[Giovanni Derks]

(In reply to comment #1)
> You say that you read 3 of the messages, but the other
> two sit there unread.

Sorry, I didn't explained it well..

I mean that you can have "a lot" of message (for example 10) and on a total of
10 message you read 3 and answer to 1 of these 3.


> If you haven't read them, they will be bold. This is sufficient enough in my
opinion.
> If you're proposing that we mark messages as ignored if you have read them,
but haven't replied to them, then that's a whole nother issue.

Well.. my original idea was born thinking about the unread/bold message.. cause
you can't perform some action on messages that stay unread for more than X hours
etc..

But this could be a user preference: by default you can mark as ignored messages
without a reply in X time and then the user can say "mark also unread mail as
ignored" or even better 2 checkbox with "mark unread mail ignored after..." and
"mark mail without replies ignored after..."

Sorry for my english; I swear it's a bit better when I'm less tired :P heh
anyway if you don't understand something, just ask.

Another example that can help explain my "first/original" idea is this: I've
some e-mail in my inbox that stay unread also for 3-4 days and would be cool to
be able to feel the difference between this and the "lastest" unread mail and
also to be able to perform some actions like i wrote on my first message.

let me know what do you think :)

bye,
Giovanni.

Comment 3

[Adam Guthrie]

You're assuming that someone is going to reply to all messages. What about the
messages that you read, but don't plan to reply to? Will this get marked as
ignored too? That doesn't make sense. 

Older, unread messages will still appear before the other unread ones if you're
sorting them by date. I really don't see the issue here/reason for this
enhancement request.

Comment 4

[Giovanni Derks]

maybe is my poor english or maybe I just didn't explained well, anyway you abuse
of the words "this doesn't make sense" .. lol

please keep in mind that I'm just tring to help..

if a message has been ignored it doesn't mean user wants to reply to it..
just that he ignored it.. if you think a little bit to it, it could be mainly
spam.. but with all this spam you can also have some things you would like to
read or reply to.. anyway it would be something very customizable and it will
allow users to better orgainze their incoming mail. Nothing more, nothing less.


> What about the messages that you read, but don't plan to reply to?

well.. this means that all the concept of read/unread is wrong.. even if usable
it won't mean it can be improved..

if you have a message marked as read it doesn't mean that is actually read by
the user. So the busy user how doesn't want to forgot to read messages _choose_
to activate this function that then will also provide another function that
allow him to prevent some message to get marked as ignored.. from example..
"don't mark as ignored all messages sent by.." or "never mark this message as
ignored" ..

it is the "reverse" way of see the things.. the one you have now, the classic
way, is that you have to check back and see if you hadn't forgot something, the
new one is like a semi-automatized to do list.. and user can choose to use the
classic method or this "new for busy people" one.. (and settings could be per
account or per folder).


imho:
- it could be usefull for many people
- it is a feature that extend the current possibilities offered by an e-mail client

so it makes sense.. 

i'd like to have also the opinion of other people.. 

bye,
Giovanni.