Current default is correct.  Closing.

Gmail is just and example. I definetely don't say that everything 
Gmail does IMP should do too. I agree with you that half of things 
they do IS ass-backward and stupid. Sent Mail management, tag 
management to name a few. However regarding message sorting, as I see 
this, through years things improved and changed because users wanted 
this. These days almost every major webmail provider, Facebook, 
Twitter, etc. sorts messages descendently. Because IMHO this is more 
natural design.
Sorry I was not clear here, I was talking about sorting/moving 
messages to different mailboxes using server side filters.
Ahh, yes, this could be the problem. But again, how many ordinary 
users use threading if they are not subscribed to any development 
mailing list? And even if they do they have to enable thread sorting 
anyway, it is off by default. So adjusting sorting direction on needed 
threaded mailbox should be no fuss.

I have actually seen thread sorting done right in The Bat! email 
client. If threading enabled they sort on thread level not on message 
level. Even more, they have and option to show all threads with new 
messages always on top. And boy it works wonders. Given that The Bat! 
is a desktop client, not sure if this can be implemented in IMP though.
If most of the admins on the mailing list will be against it, or if 
there will be even a tie then fine by me. As I said, I can change the 
setting in my servers myself. Just thought this would be and 
improvement for others too.

I don't care what Gmail does.  Any argument that begins with "Gmail 
does it this way..." is instantly a loser in my book.  Gmail does ALL 
sorts of things ass-backward and stupid.  The important query is 
instead why one way of doing things is better than the other.

Same goes for the "you have to cater to what people are expecting/used 
to" argument.  That is complete BS.  If you are doing things properly, 
users will adapt (quickly).  Otherwise you are arguing that all design 
decisions will be made by Google, Apple, etc. since they are the most 
popular.  But most popular != best.
This is an inaccurate statement.  By design, IMAP is designed NOT to 
sort messages by default (sorting was only added server-side after the 
fact).  The only built-in sorting mechanism in base IMAP is sorting by 
arrival *ascending*.
I'll just stop here and note that thread sorting is *completely* 
useless when it is done by descending sort.

The fact that we disagree so much indicates that one setting is not 
clearly preferable to the other setting.  Thus, there is no reason to 
change the default - all things being equal, we should keep the status 
quo to confuse users as least as possible.

I've already done so, however got completely zero response to that. 
Maybe it was unnoticed or maybe just nobody cares :) In any case, it 
would not harm if someone coule repost it in more "official" form or 
even chross-post to horde@lists.

I agree with Vilius. Maybe we should do a quick questionnaire among 
the other admins on the IMP mailing list.

Except it isn't as my experience with users shows. We often get calls 
with questions "How do I adjust the mailbox so it would show me the 
newest messages on top, just like Gmail does?", or "Why can't I see 
new messages if the sidebar on the left shows that I have a dozen of 
them?". Most users even with IMAP don't use folders and just hangs all 
day in the Inbox view. Getting back to the screenshot I took, it was 
confusing even for me the first time I saw this.
Technically, ideally, the point of IMAP is to do message sorting 
server side. In that case all mailboxes can and does receive email. 
Even if some mailboxes doesn't receive mail, using that kind of 
sorting on Inbox gives far more advantages than does harm. IMHO 
descending sorting is more...  natural way presenting information. The 
newest and probably most important (until user actually views the 
message) information is always there on screen, and you don't have to 
write some chunky piece of code which would take care of "automatic" 
scrolling to the end, etc.

So my complete proposition would be to make sortdir descending and 
mailbox_start firstpage.

What is the most important thing to a user in a mailbox?  Messages 
that they have not yet seen.  This is way more useful than loading a 
mailbox and then having to scroll through all sorts of pages to find 
the first unseen message.

And this sort is the only option that works as expected with both sort 
directions.  Viewing the first page with ascending sort isn't all that 
useful.  (Descending sort doesn't make much sense for any mailbox that 
isn't receiving new mail, so it is a bad choice for the default.)

I'm not questioning if it is correct behaviour or not. I can change 
these preferences myself on all my servers if needed. I can use even 
Virtual Inbox if needed. This ticket is more about what people see by 
default in their install and how it correlates to what they are used 
to in other email clients.

This looks like the correct behavior to me.  I disagree that we should 
change this preference.

If you want easy access to unseen messages on a single page, use 
Virtual Inbox.

I think this deserves public opinion on IMP mailing list. I'll post 
it. And while at it I would like to propose changing sortdir as well.

We should instead tweak the positioning then to jump so that the 
newest unread message is at the bottom. Chances are better to have 
more than this unread message in the current view then.
That being said, I won't mind defaulting to the first page in the 
prefs, I've been using that setting since 12 years anyway. :)

1. Attaching a screenshot. As you can see, even if I have 2 or more 
unread messages I'm always presented only with one unread message on 
the start. And user doesn't have any indication where other unread 
messages are, because in most such cases scrollbar scale is too small.

2. This setting was useful in traditional mode because it helped to 
find a particular page with unread messages. This is irrelevant now as 
there are no more pages.

3. This brings IMP inline with other email clients. E.i. newest 
messages are always on top Gmail style.

I fail to see why this makes a difference whether we are on the 
dynamic or traditional view.

Now that IMP defaults to dynamic view there is more sense to show 
first page instead of first unseen message. Because the other way 
around user is almost always presented with one unseen message on 
mailbox start even if he has more unread messages. I found that this 
can be confusing at least.

Patch attached.