Mac Mail setup question

I am a satisfied user of SpamSieve (for several years!), but must admit that I need to violate the setup instructions to make SpamSieve work the way I want. Perhaps you can tell me what I don’t understand.

I have two Macs, one at work and one at home. I use a central IMAP server to deliver my email, and it is important that I be able to see all mail from each computer. Consequently, I do not keep anything, including junk mail, on my Macs. It’s all on the server. (I do keep backup copies on my local Macs, but not for daily use.)

My problem has to do with steps 2 and 7. I want the junk folder to appear at the top of the folder list, along with the Inbox, Drafts, Sent, and Trash, as defined by the IMAP server. That way I can easily scan the Junk folder from either Mac for SpamSieve errors (yes, even SpamSieve isn’t perfect ;). In order to do that, I must:

Step 2. I put the Spam mailbox on the server, not “On My Mac”. This seems innocuous enough.

Step 7. If, as asked, I uncheck the “Enable junk mail filtering” box, then I no longer see the Junk folder near the top of the folder list, where I want it. What is the downside of leaving the box checked? I have run SS this way for years, with no obvious deleterious effects.

Comment: Most of the other setup steps are not relevant to me. I have no other Mail rules besides SpamSieve’s. Is this what saves me from the bad consequences of violating step #7?

That’s fine, but if your use pattern is such that you can’t reliably correct SpamSieve’s mistakes (using the right copy of SpamSieve) you should turn off auto-training.

You can rename the Spam mailbox with a space in front to make it sort to the top of the list.

Yes, that’s fine. You can also use Change Settings to tell the training commands to use the server mailbox.

Enabling Mail’s junk mail filter means that you won’t know which spam messages were caught by SpamSieve and which by Mail. Therefore, you won’t know when SpamSieve made a mistake, so you won’t be able to correct it and its accuracy will decline. There’s a way to use Mail’s Junk mailbox without using its filter.

Mac Mail Setup

Thanks. This is how I’m already configured. I was worried, because it didn’t seem to conform to your suggested setup.

FYI: This came up now, because with the upgrade to OSX 10.6, I was reviewing all my SW configurations.