bugs get a mail about pre-dupes bugs are going to be marked as dupes of it

One issue with the described solution is that it's non-obvious how to determine when all the dupes have come through. At the time of any given processed duplicate, there is no means by which the system can know if someone is going to process another duplicate in the future.

I'm also not sure that the problem is related to the number of duplicates, so much as the results of marking many bugs duplicate in a short period of time. Might it make sense to batch duplication messages within some time period? Say 30 minutes? Users wouldn't get more than one mail each half-hour, which tends to be less annoying, and the system doesn't need to interface to a crystal ball.

It was my understanding that Robbert used a set of ubuntu-dev tools, so I guessed it was a single batch.
according to wgrant It was many requests.

if so, I would agree with persia that using dev tools or some other future UI on LP should have a 30 min timeout, *before* emailing about dupes, since that isn't even a critical change to any bug. at least not as important as request for input.

Or it could hold on sending duplicate mails until 30 minutes after the
most recent mark-as-dupe. But is the work to make something like this
happen worth it? Do people get spammed a lot in this way, or is this
relatively rare?

@BUGabundo: Heh, I didn't see your comment until after I posted.

There is already a batching mechanism of sorts within the bugs
emailing system, but I'm not au fait with it. We should check that
this is operating correctly, or if it can be adjusted to cope
differently with floods like this.

I don't think that improving this is a high priority though, unless
it's happening a lot. But... I can imagine that it will happen more
often, as more processes are automated using the API.

While it is a fairly rare event, sending 200 emails each to 200 people isn't a good thing to do, ever.

With regard to batching: the events generating email are each on a different duplicate - not all on the master - so the batching never kicks in.

Gavin not a lot, lucklly, but when it does happen ( and is see it once every 2 months or so ) it affects HUNDREDS of users, making LP and Ubuntu look very bad, not good net etiquette, and spammy.

_Any_ thing we can do to minimize this, should be done ASAP.

Right now, grouping those dup mails, *and* going the way I suggested on the OP, would be a great improvement