[MlMt] Best way to auto-archive trash in gmail?

[Bill Cole]

On 15 Jul 2018, at 23:25 (-0400), Michael Hucka wrote:

> Did I do something in a past exchange to trigger this rather hostile 
> reply?  I honestly don't remember, but if I did, I apologize.

No, it is my place to apologize. I absolutely did not intend to come 
across as personally hostile and I am sorry that I did.

I spend much of my time managing mail systems and I AM hostile towards 
patterns of using mail that work against their general design, causing 
unnecessary frustration (like yours with Google's Trash policy) and 
often (particularly with smaller mail systems) performance troubles. I 
do not understand where the pattern of Trash-as-Archive comes from, but 
it is surprisingly common and at the root of an inordinate fraction of 
user complaints even in environments *without* auto-empty mechanisms in 
place.

> I'm also not really sure why you presume to tell others on this list 
> how they should manage their mail; you're free to do as you wish, but 
> you should realize that others may have workflows that attempt to 
> address other needs.  Some of those workflows may be based on even 
> longer experiences than yours.  (My archives go back to 1987 and I 
> currently have 1,412,484 messages, as of a few moments ago, although 
> to be fair, some the 1990's are probably Usenet postings due to using 
> an Emacs-based mail & news reader for a long time.)  Maybe you're 
> better than me at deciding what can really be "just deleted" on the 
> spot, but after many years of trying, I've decided it's better for me 
> to keep everything (yes, including what is clearly spam).

I'm *not* very good at it but I recognize non-retention as important. I 
also retain all of my delivered spam, because spam control is a 
professional specialty of mine. I have 246 IMAP mailboxes in my main 
account, and another 269 mailboxes for messages prior to 2006, imported 
from Eudora and only loaded on my primary machine inn an "offline 
account" that has no backing server.

The approach I've found helpful is to:

(1) Automatically file new unread messages in mailboxes other than INBOX 
when they fit some recurring logical class that correlates to how 
important it is to read and/or how long it makes sense to keep it.
(2) Automatically delete 'old' messages when they meet well-defined 
criteria for deletion, even if those criteria are very broad.

An example of (1) is that each mailing list I subscribe to has its own 
IMAP mailbox. An example of (2) is that each of my mailboxes that is 
associated with a mailing list which has a public archive is purged of 
messages older than a month which are not in threads that I have 
participated in by an associated Smart Mailbox with a rule.

-- 
Bill Cole
bill at scconsult.com or billcole at apache.org
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)
Currently Seeking Steadier Work: https://linkedin.com/in/billcole