bug#897: Huge numbers of duplicate mails

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

Package: emacs,emacsbugs

Almost every mail on the bug-gnu-emacs mailing list is duplicated.

Mailman at least seems to filter them from the html archives, but if
you are subscribed to the list, or look at the gnu.emacs.bug newsgroup
you can see them.

It happens because people keep using followup to reply to all the
addresses in a bug report, ie they send mail to both: 123@emacsbugs
and bug-gnu-emacs (or emacs-pretest-bugs). This was traditionally the
Right Thing to do in these lists, so it will be hard to get people to
change.

Perhaps bug #430 (wish...) will help with this, but here is another
suggestion:

If emacsbugs sees that bug-gnu-emacs or emacs-pretest-bug is already
Cc'd on a reply to bug, it should avoid sending out another copy to
the list. Ie, it treats it as a "quiet" submission only to be entered
in the tracker.

(Presumably there must already be some logic to handle this case,
because it at least avoids creating a new numbered bug report.)