Unsubscribing from mailing-list threads (was: Preferred way to get imap emails)

[Francesco Ariis]

Hello Matthias,

On Tue, Jul 30, 2019 at 07:40:02AM +0200, Matthias Apitz wrote:
> I Cc'ed the author of the article: fa-ml at ariis.it
> Please keep him/her in Cc when you reply.

Big smile, the author and the poster are in this case the
same person: myself. :P

> Thanks for this pointer. The doc describes exactly the problem. But, the
> proposed solution with a macro deleting threads which follow the rule
> (copied from the doc):
> 
> "Threads with only replies means threads where the originating post
> isn’t present; if it is not present is because we deleted it; if we
> deleted it we didn’t like it and we don’t want replies to it, too."
> 
> is not good. Sometimes (many times) I have saved the original post of a
> "good" thread in some place, for example into the mbox file ~/Mail/mutt and so the
> above pattern would touch/delete a "good" thread also as a "bad" one.
> 
> A solution must be based on some kind of a local "database" file of threads marked as
> "bad" threads (perhaps as patterns) and one must actively store the given
> "bad" thread into it, for example with <ESC>M and then a <ESC>D would
> later, even in the next mutt session, read this "database" file and delete
> all threads from the actual mailbox for all patterns in it.

Useful remarks! Indeed a 100% solution *has* to pass from some kind
of database/list of good/bad threads. For not, marking a message
as "important" saves the thread (even if broken) from touch/delete;
this alleviates the pain in some cases.
-F