MBOX-Line: From arnt at gulbrandsen.priv.no  Sun Jul 12 23:41:26 2009
To: imap-protocol@u.washington.edu
From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <arnt@gulbrandsen.priv.no>
Date: Fri Jun  8 12:34:42 2018
Subject: [Imap-protocol] off-topic: stats on mail duplication, mailing
	list sizes, etc?
In-Reply-To: <97903.1247435045@parc.com>
References: <97903.1247435045@parc.com>
Message-ID: <Rg7WwXCRWrFmZqFCiR9CJQ.md5@lochnagar.oryx.com>

Bill Janssen writes:
> I'm interested in figuring some strawman stats about email duplication 
> that could be addressed by a site-wide IMAP server. For example, how 
> many mailing lists an "average" organization has; the average number 
> of users per mailing list; the average message traffic (in both 
> messages and bytes) per day, per week, per year. I know that a number 
> of you have actual experience with this.

Yes, but unfortunately such numbers tend to be tied a little too tightly 
to private email.

I do know a couple of things, though:

1. The number of mailboxes in which a particular bodypart is stored 
varier per installation. I haven't seen an average greater than 4, I've 
seen several only a little below, and I have seen averages close to 1. 
I'd use 3 or 4 as a number if I were you.

2. Mailing lists are difficult to count. You can count owner-* 
addresses, you can count List-ID fields, but there's a lot of 
unofficial address lists stored in people's address books or even 
heads.

Arnt

