Closed Bug 720147 Opened 12 years ago Closed 10 years ago

Email auto-complete does not return recently used address first

Categories

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

9 Branch
x86
Windows XP
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 382415

People

(Reporter: zex2345, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:9.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/9.0.1
Build ID: 20111220165912

Steps to reproduce:

Let's assume I have a friend with 5 email addresses, which of course has to have several entries in my Address Book. Let's assume I sent 1000 emails to that person over the last 10 years to his email address#1. So definitely, that's the most frequently used email for that nick.

But then I start sending to his other address, let's call it email#5 (maybe because he checks that more often when he's at work). Now, if I send 2 email messages to adress#5 then I want Thunderbird to offer me email#5 next time I want to send the message to that person.

Maybe in 5 days the email#1 will become my first choice again, but for now I want Thunderbird to see that I'm using #5 most frequently (in the recent time). Can't TB deduct it from the fact that last 20 messages went to email#5? 

Or do I have to send messages for the next 10 years for it to figure it out? Or delete, rename and move entries in the Address Book for it to understand? It's not that hard to implement the most-recently-used algorithm, is it?



Actual results:

When writing a new message, when I start typing the nick of that person, auto-complete offers me an email address for that person that I didn't use for months. Even if I send 20 messages to a different address. I have 3x entries for that person in my Address Book, because the person has 5 email addresses.


Expected results:

It should find out that last 20 messages went to email#5 and offer me that one first.
(In reply to Zex from comment #0)
> Or do I have to send messages for the next 10 years for it to figure it out?
No, that is not practical! But this is an enhancement, not a bug IMHO.
The functionality exists already. There's some scoring that lifts most used contacts to the top.
Then the scoring coefficients should be made higher for recent messages. They must carry more weight than those sent years ago. Things change.
(In reply to Magnus Melin from comment #2)
> The functionality exists already. There's some scoring that lifts most used
> contacts to the top.

Magnus, reporter is asking for "recency" algorithm, which intelligently combines "frequency" and "recency". TB/SM does NOT have that functionality yet. We only have a dull frequency counter aka popularityIndex which, as reporter correctly describes, only ever goes up but never down again, and user has no way of checking nor fixing that short of creating new AB contacts.

(In reply to Zex from comment #3)
> Then the scoring coefficients should be made higher for recent messages.
> They must carry more weight than those sent years ago. Things change.

+1. Zex, you're right. Could you help us implement this?

So this is a duplicate of
bug 382415 - Popularity index of autocomplete doesn't honor timeline (use frecency for email contacts)
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 10 years ago
Resolution: --- → DUPLICATE
Hi Thomas. I'd be happy to help. Seems this is a duplicate of #382415 so I will leave my comment here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382415
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