"reply all"

In mail-systems where there are distribution lists there is always a risk (or chance?) that someone uses one of the larger lists by mistake. And sometimes that leads to persons on list responding to that mail - using "reply to all" function.

If more people do the same it will trigger mails with the message "do not use reply to all" - possibly also sent to all. Of course.

Here are some real data from such "incident" today. Already after 17 minutes the apology was out "Sorry. Did not mean to send to all. Please ignore".

In the diagram you can see what kind of mails was sent using "reply to all" in the next few hours:

On the x-axis you have 30-minutes periods from first email sent. And y-axis is frequence.

As you can see there are lots of email just saying "You probably got the wrong guy."

On second place comes the "Do not reply to all" messages (sent using "reply to all").

And then there are some people that would like to be removed from the list, some trying to explain how to send emails correctly - and also someone that was just a bit upset about.

Remember. The chart shows only the mails I could see and that was sent using "reply to all". I assume that the person sending the mail to distribution list in the first place also received some direct mail.

Anyone else having more data and patterns describing this?