Howdy Ryan (or anyone in the know)

Is there any way to empty my trash folder?

I ask because, despite the message at the bottom of the page (saying deletion will happen automatically), I've got a plethora messages all the way up to two months back. This makes it hard to find something there that I didn't think I'd need but really did.

When I go to the trash folder, the option to empty trash (the way of doing it with gmail) is grayed out. It would be really cool to either (1) not have it grayed out, and be the mechanism to truly get rid of its contents, or (2) allow the user to specify an auto-deletion timeout interval.

Thanks!

wdqt

Strangely, I tried to do this a couple of days ago. The verbiage below the trash folder reads, “Your trash folder will be emptied automatically as needed—so don't worry about it feeling cluttered!”.

I took that to mean you could not manually delete them. They probably drop off after 30 days or so.

Nope. I’ve got mail in mine dating back to mid-May.

This makes it hard to find something there that I didn't think I'd need but really did.

Well, if all of your sent mail was deleted too soon after you mailed it, you wouldn't be able to find it at all! But there are search options near the bottom of your mailbox page that helps you sort through your messages including who it was to and allows you to specify a timespan to search. Did you try using those?

When I go to the trash folder, the option to empty trash (the way of doing it with gmail) is grayed out.

That's not an option to empty trash--that's an option to move something to the trash folder. And you can't move other people's AQ mail into their trash folder, which is really what you're looking at when you view your your "sent" message--you're looking at other people's mail. AQ doesn't store the same message twice (it saves disk space), so literally, you are reading their message, and AQ won't let you do anything with other people's mail--except read it if you happened to have been the person who sent it. You can't move it, you can't delete it. You can't really do anything to it without it affecting what the recipient sees.

The messages are supposed to be deleted automatically after a month, though (or it might have been 5 weeks?), so something is wonky. It happened earlier this year too and I thought I fixed the problem, but clearly AQ isn't auto-deleting messages like it's supposed to which I'll look into.

But I'd use those search options to narrow down a long list of messages. If you know you sent the message on a certain day or timeframe, you can really cut down the list of results! Or if you know specifically who you sent it to.

-- Ryan

I'm confused by your reference to the trash mail being 'sent' mail. My trash mail is mail I have received, read & deleted--not mail that I sent. My sent mail is a totally different tab.

I'm confused by your reference to the trash mail being 'sent' mail.

I think I confused myself too. =)

Your trash can't be deleted too soon either because it's part of other people's sent folder! Basically, AQ mail won't ever be deleted for the first five or so weeks it was created. AQ mail only gets deleted from the server when it's in the trash folder and is older than about five weeks (if I remember correctly).

Basically, both the sender and receiver have to agree to delete the message before it gets truly deleted on AQ. The receiver agrees to delete it by putting it in the trash folder while the sender "agrees" to delete it after a decent amount of time has passed. (Which is done automatically since otherwise, most senders would probably rarely--if ever--delete their sent folders.)

But in any case, you can't delete messages in the trash folder. The trash folder is just a place to store messages until AQ is ready to delete it permanently.

-- Ryan

Well, if all of your sent mail was deleted too soon after you mailed it, you wouldn't be able to find it at all!

Sure, and that's why I would like the functionality of being able to manually flush myself. Then I can make that determination.

That's not an option to empty trash--that's an option to move something to the trash folder.

Sure, but its the *mechanism* that the google mail utility provides to specifically allow the user to flush. I'm just asking for the same functionality, how the user does it is unimportant. Adding a 'Flush' or 'Empty' button to the 'Trash' folder would be fine, too. Same functionality.

AQ doesn't store the same message twice (it saves disk space), so literally, you are reading their message, and AQ won't let you do anything with other people's mail-

That makes sense. I assume its just a foreign key. So if you were to provide an 'Empty' button in the 'Trash' view cal', then wouldn't it just delete the reference in *my* trash view to it?

re: search options
In this particular case, I couldn't remember any specific keywords. But in general, I really prefer the finer granularity control anyways.

AQ doesn't store the same message twice (it saves disk space), so literally, you are reading their message

Disk space isn't expensive anymore, and hasn't been since the 1980s. To misquote another poster, "this doesn't make sense".

Modern (circa 1998) mail systems duplicate messages to the sender and all recipients. This allows each party to the message to do with the message as they please.

Disk space isn't expensive anymore, and hasn't been since the 1980s.

It isn't if you buy your own disk space. But Atlas Quest is run on someone else's servers. That means you don't buy disk space, you rent it. Renting is more expensive in the long run, but unless you find a place that will let you put your own server in their space (and rent that space), you have to rent their server and their disk space.

But then they take care of making sure that the disks don't fail, and that they are backed up.

Modern (circa 1998) mail systems duplicate messages to the sender and all recipients.

That is because they don't rely on both (all) messages being on the same physical system (or on the same cloud). They may be, in which case it may look like they are separate messages but may actually "cheat" and have one copy with two references. That is until someone deletes a reference. If it is Google then once both sides deletes the reference then it isn't available to anyone (outside of Google).

Google NEVER forgets.

Disk space isn't expensive anymore

Right now, 20 GB of disk space (and an extra 20 GB for one backup of it) is about $150/year on my VPS. Maybe you don't think $150/year is much, but it is for me. There are people working minimum wage at McDonalds who probably make as much as I do running this site.

My Gmail account currently gives me 17 GB of data to store my email. Premium members pay less than $40/year, so I can't even afford to give premium members that kind of disk space. I'm not a giant corporation, and disk space is not cheap for me.

I look around at other hosting services occasionally for better deals, but I'm not "just" paying for disk space--I'm paying for a hosting service. I'd love to buy a 1 terabyte hard drive for $80 at Costco and plug it in, but I can't do that. Nor do I don't have economies of scale working in my favor. I've wondered how costs might be if I moved AQ to the cloud, but as things stand now, it's not especially cheap--although it has improved over the years.

But if the disk space expenses "doesn't make sense" to you, maybe you'd prefer the argument that less mail stored on the system means the database is smaller and can therefore run faster with less memory requirements (more memory also costs more, as does more processing power--both of which I'd likely need if I start growing the database considerably).

Nowadays, I'm getting close to the quotas Google imposes for the use of their maps (surprise, they're not free if you use them a lot--and AQ and W4F both tend to use a lot of maps).

I have to keep a tight reign on expenses if everyone wants to keep using this website, because it would go bankrupt if I tried to keep up with bigger companies.

For those who want a full-fledged, Gmail-quality email editor, forward your AQ messages to somewhere else like Gmail and use that. They're good at it! Google will be happy to store vast amounts of messages--sent and received--with features I could never hope to implement. That's how AQ used to work before I created AQ mail. (The main reason I originally created AQ mail, though, was because regular email often got lost in the net or wound up in spam folders never to see the light of day.)

But it's a perfectly viable option to change your email settings to forward AQ mail to your external inbox, and you can reply to letterboxers from those inboxes as well. Using the AQ mail system here is optional and if it's not satisfactory, you don't have to use it.

-- Ryan

We need to take up a collection and buy Ryan his own server!

But it's a perfectly viable option to change your email settings to forward AQ mail to your external inbox, and you can reply to letterboxers from those inboxes as well. Using the AQ mail system here is optional and if it's not satisfactory, you don't have to use it.

interesting. i have never thought of the aq mail system as not being satisfactory. my mail here is forwarded to my yahoo account. from there it is forwarded to an email program on my computer. it is not only aq that i have mail forwarded from, all forums, that have this option, i use. the reason is quite simple i like having my email available and sorted into folders where i have access to them even if i am not online. i should go into my aq mail periodically and delete my received and sent mail. guess i just made a goal for myself.

ryan's explanation was good. if it was me i would have said if you don't like the clutter in the trash folder........ don't look at it. after all it is trash.

smile

i should go into my aq mail periodically and delete my received and sent mail.

You don't have to do that. AQ does that automatically (eventually) too, and for the same reason to save on disk space. The only AQ mail that doesn't get deleted eventually is if you specifically archive it.

-- Ryan

We need to take up a collection and buy Ryan his own server!

That's not necessary--I just need to keep things running within its budget!

-- Ryan