admin/build/mail_edit/subscriptions-taxa Confusion

On the admin/build/mail_edit/subscriptions-taxa page the Private message type field has the following explanation: "Fill this in to send a private message instead of the mail (when the recipient has an account on [site]). In the folder view, users will be able to filter on this. Example: contact mails."

For one thing, what exactly are we trying to do here? Apparently, we're trying to redirect email notifications generated by the Subscriptions module to private messages. It seems weird, but maybe someone really wants to do that.

However, this is not the end of it: Subscriptions allows you to subscribe to private messages! If you do assign a private message type, then the category subscriptions type will show up on the subscriptions page, where you can enter a subscription for that type!

Will it ever end? I'm not sure... There are two additional mail templates on admin/build/mail_edit:

• admin/build/mail_edit/subscriptions-pmsg-
• admin/build/mail_edit/subscriptions-pmsg-private-message

(It's probably a bug that there are two of them.)

Apparently, these will let you redirect subscription notifications of subscription notification private messages to private messages. Got that? I bet if you assign a type here, it'll show up on the subscriptions page, and you'll be able to create an endless loop...

Finally, after all this weirdness, here's a clear bug: the category subscriptions type shows up on the subscriptions page as soon as you assign a Message Description. It should not show up until you assign the Private message type. This may be a bug in the Subscriptions module, but I'll leave it here for now, because it's such a long story.