100 is clearly an arbitrary limit, but it seems to me that if people need more than that, then perhaps they need more dynamic rules.

I assume the rules are to put mail in folders according to the sender?

if domain a then folder a
if domain b then folder b etc

whereas a rule of...

if (list of domains) then create/place in folder called 'domain name'

would be simpler.

Have you analysed the user's rules?

wow... 100 Mailrules is a lot. And I think 1.000 user with 300 mailrules (1000x300=300.000) will have a bad impact on the router system. So I think this is the reason for the limitation.

But a autom. system which can optimize rules would be nice. For example... the user created a rule to move mails from XY into folder ZZ. After some days he remove the folder but forgott the rule. A cleanup task should deactivate this rule (I will create a new ideajam for this).

Or another example... the user blocked eMails from XY via rule 1 and via rule2 for user UU and with rule3 he blocked user WW. The autom. cleanup system should merge all these rules into only one.


Oh, and I would like to crosslink this here when we discuss the rule system:
Allow us to use X-Spam-Level in rules
{ Link }

While I promoted it because I don't feel restrictions like this should be there, but seriously...100+ mail rules? Sounds like PEBCAK...

yet another example writing applications bandaided by using end clients, rather than looking at the problem as a whole working out if there's a better way to do it.

how about getting the server to do more of the work? enterprise mail i.e. exchange and domino are great for allow people to talk, but let leave the spam filtering, av and complicated rules for specialised solutions i.e. mailsweeper, exim, qmail etc.

just cause client x has y features, doesn't necessary mean its the right way to approach the problem.

I demote this. I think, 100 is pretty big number. For the guys who have some spetial needs there can be a special treatment, like mail processing agents, custom applications, etc...

I like Paul's idea better of a dynamic rule set rather that requiring individual rules. It just makes more sense.

Besides...what user is going to want to maintain over 100 mail rules?
Answer: NO one.

Most folks who do this much micromanaging are supervisors who "Don't have time" to manage stuff like this. So they just keep adding and adding and adding...