'+' email addresses should be collapsed

Why is this going to be encouraged and why do we want to hide the '+whatever' part?

Address extensions aren't universally supported. I know in Postfix you must specifically enable them, and I don't remember what the default is. I think there's only a small (but vocal) audience for +addresses. Which is not to say we shouldn't support their use! I fully agree that we should.

Having said that, I'm not sure I see the use case for treating these addresses any differently than an other address. You can't /know/ that a +address is treated specially by the recipient, so you have to expect that they aren't. OTOH, allowing a user to hide addresses (even +addresses) is a good thing.

Addresses are already hidden by default though aren't they? Who are we hiding them from?

Barry Warsaw wrote:
> Address extensions aren't universally supported. I know in Postfix you
> must specifically enable them, and I don't remember what the default is.
> I think there's only a small (but vocal) audience for +addresses. Which
> is not to say we shouldn't support their use! I fully agree that we
> should.

And some mail servers use a different delimiter. For instance, I have a mail
account where "-foo" suffixes are delivered to my account, rather than "+foo" as
used by gmail. Postfix allows you to configure your server either way (or in
fact with arbitrary delimiters IIRC).

> Having said that, I'm not sure I see the use case for treating these
> addresses any differently than an other address. You can't /know/ that
> a +address is treated specially by the recipient, so you have to expect
> that they aren't. OTOH, allowing a user to hide addresses (even
> +addresses) is a good thing.

In general, you have no idea just from an email address where it's going to be
delivered, and I'm not sure why Launchpad needs to care. For example, I have
addresses at completely different domains that all reach the same set of
Maildirs on a particular server, but looking at the addresses you can't tell
that this is so.

I share Barry's opinion that we should just treat all email addresses equally.

If it's desired that a user can have email addresses visible and not others, why
not let that user set an explicit flag per address?

Addresses are displayed to logged in users unless the owner has explicitly chosen to hide them.

I was thinking that for users who use the address extensions to filter their mailinglist email, as per the use cases in the specs, would end up with an unreadable list of addresses.

Rejecting for now as it is probably YAGNI.

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On Jun 8, 2007, at 1:31 AM, Andrew Bennetts wrote:

> And some mail servers use a different delimiter. For instance, I
> have a mail
> account where "-foo" suffixes are delivered to my account, rather
> than "+foo" as
> used by gmail. Postfix allows you to configure your server either
> way (or in
> fact with arbitrary delimiters IIRC).

You're correct. I was going to mention that and forgot. ;) It's
recipient_delimiter for Postfix.

>> Having said that, I'm not sure I see the use case for treating these
>> addresses any differently than an other address. You can't /know/
>> that
>> a +address is treated specially by the recipient, so you have to
>> expect
>> that they aren't. OTOH, allowing a user to hide addresses (even
>> +addresses) is a good thing.
>
> In general, you have no idea just from an email address where it's
> going to be
> delivered, and I'm not sure why Launchpad needs to care. For
> example, I have
> addresses at completely different domains that all reach the same
> set of
> Maildirs on a particular server, but looking at the addresses you
> can't tell
> that this is so.

Indeed, this is why things like VERP exist because all those forwards
(and I do the same thing you do) introduce steps where an intervening
mail server could bounce the message, with with no traces left of the
original recipient address.

> I share Barry's opinion that we should just treat all email addresses
> equally.
>
> If it's desired that a user can have email addresses visible and
> not others, why
> not let that user set an explicit flag per address?

+1

- -Barry

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