83016 - Option to remove collected addresses automatically after some time.

Status: NEW

(MailNews Core :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[Roger Martensson]

(Doing some cut'n paste from netscape.public.mozilla.mail-news)

I tested the idea in said newsgroups and got a positive response so I'm filing
this enhancement request for futher consideration.

From the Newsgroup(First posting by me):
"I like the address collecting feature but when reading lots of maillists the
collection becomes rather big(Didn't find a newsgroup for the Addressbook people)."

"Idea: Collected addresses gets automatically removed after some time.
If the user edits the collected address it becomes a "user specified" card and
is stored in permanently."

Torgeir Veimo responded:
"Or have a "move to personal address book" button that does this."

Tim Wunder responded:
"Should be easy to add a pref like "collected addresses expire after x days"
right below the pref to "limit the collected address book to
 x cards" pref."

Comment 1

[Alex Bishop]

Two different things have been requested here. One is to automatically delete
collected addresses after a particular length of time and the other is to have
an easy way of moving cards to another book. This latter request should be filed
as a seperate RFE.

Taking the main part of the bug (as described in the summary), I would have
thought that just limiting the number of cards would keep down numbers, but I
can see the usefulness in automatically deleting addresses after a certain
period of time. It would probably be better if addresses were deleted n days
after they were last used (mail sent to the address), rather than after they
were collected. This would ensure that collected addresses that are regularly
used don't get deleted.

Marking NEW.

Comment 2

[Tim Wunder]

David Hallowell wrote in n.p.m.mail-news:
"I thought that the collected address book would automatically delete the least
recently used addresses from the address book when it was full? If it doesn't
then that's how I think it should work.

It'd be the best way, imposing a time limit for expiry isn't the best solution,
you don't use Mozilla for a few weeks and your collected address book empties."


So, if the time expriation of collected addresses is implemented, it is
important that there is a means of turning it on or off.


Alex said: "It would probably be better if addresses were deleted n days
after they were last used (mail sent to the address), rather than after they
were collected. This would ensure that collected addresses that are regularly
used don't get deleted."

I disagree. I think the better way to ensure that collected addresses that are
used are not deleted is to automatically move them into the Personal Address
Book when they are used, or when the user edits them. Collected Addresses should
be viewed as a temporary file. If you use or edit an address from there, it no
longer should be considered temporary and it should get moved to the permanent
Personal Address Book.

In that regard, the "two" RFE's that Roger filed with this bug are related
enough, I think, to be considered 1 RFE.

Comment 3

[Alex Bishop]

I think the automatic moving of addresses from Collected Addresses to the
default address book when used should be optional. I read a review of Netscape 6
which said it loved the way that collected addresses weren't lumped in with all
the regular ones. There's the chance that an address would just be used once and
then the user might not want it to be moved into their default address book. A
possiblity could be that if a user uses an address from Collected Addresses a
dialogue could pop up asking if they want to move the address to their default
address book (though this dialogue could be annoying - how about a
don't-ask-me-this-again checkbox?)

Out of interest, which cards are deleted first when Collected Addresses gets
full? Is the least recently used, the first one added, or what?

Comment 4

[timeless]

would addresses that frequently appear in newsposts but which the user hasn't 
written to be treated as added each time they're seen?  Otherwise, a consistent 
poster is likely to be killed from collected addresses in favor of a recent 
spammer (which doesn't make sense).

Comment 5

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

taking all of chuang's bugs.  she doesn't work on mozilla anymore.

Comment 6

[michael_bourgon]

Anyone know what the status of this is?  Since my wife & I just both got nailed
by this HARD (she & I both assumed it would keep them, and have deleted the
emails that had the addresses), might I recommend having it keep everything as a
default, and make it so you manually activate the delayed-removal function. 
That way the powerusers that want it on can find the switch to activate it, and
the rest of us can leave it off.  It was a handy feature, but now I'm just
**** off at it.  Are they gone for good, or is there maybe a file somewhere I
can modify?  Thanks.  Now to try and calm down my wife. :(

Comment 7

[Jim Booth]

Clarifying description.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Mark, does this fit into the current direction of CAB?