Re: [apps-discuss] Fwd: I-D Action: draft-sparks-genarea-mailarch-00.txt

[Cyrus Daboo <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

--On November 15, 2011 12:26:31 PM +0800 Marc Blanchet 
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> - great doing this. completly agree. please!
> - I would really like to add anonymous IMAP capabilities: Cyrus Daboo
> while having his own company selling a mail client (Mulberry) set up
> email mailing list available via IMAP anonymous. That was great to use,
> and then all the search capabilities are within the IMAP client. - cc:
> apps area for the above IMAP suggestion.

Yes a public IMAP server with mailboxes for each mailing list would be a 
fine option. In fact, I still read several IETF mailing lists that way. In 
addition to the benefits Marc cites, the other major benefit is that it is 
trivial to reply to mailing list messages because you are already in your 
email client.

One downside of an anonymous service would be the lack of of per-user seen 
state. It would be much more convenient if users had accounts on the IMAP 
server just for reading the public archives - that way each user would have 
their own seen flag status on the email messages, making it easier to keep 
track of what has been read. I would guess that hooking into the existing 
IETF accounts infrastructure would be ideal.

-- 
Cyrus Daboo