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Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

Another take on the same problem is to send an automatic reply saying

  Your email has been received.
  There are %N emails in my Inbox before yours. 
  Your email is important to me.
  The estimated wait time for the response is %M days.
  Thank you for your patience.

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If two people both used that automatic reply, and one of them emailed the other, it would result in the world's funniest arms race.

The big email provides should already have loop detection. This is no different than a vacation email or an NDR.

Or ARMMs race: http://catb.org/jargon/html/A/ARMM.html

If I ever were to get an email from anyone saying that, I guarantee I would never email them again. So incredibly annoying.

Well then, it may have served its purpose!

Seriously though, there's maybe a dozen ultra-important people in the world for whom I could tolerate a reply like that. But anyone that important really should have their secretary sorting through their email anyway.

A reply like that from someone of lower (or even equal) status would be incredibly rude.

The problem with this approach is that I would not want to auto-reply to every message, particularly not group lists or important people who expect their stuff to be read on time. I think smokesignal is a lot more subtle.

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