Motivation

Mutt is an email client I use on UNIX. Too often I found myself hitting 'g' to group-reply an email, instead of 'r' to reply to the sender only. If the email I am replying to is sent to a mailing list, then I will end up sending the reply to many unintended receipients (e.g., all staffs in SoC!), potentially resulting in embarassing situations.

The Fixed

A simple hack in the source code of mutt 1.4.2.1 can prevent this from happening -- if the current email is a group-reply, then mutt checks through the list of hardcoded emails, and remove them from the CC list. This is done in mutt_fetch_recips() in send.c

    if ((flags & SENDGROUPREPLY) && !in->mail_followup_to)
    {
      /* if(!mutt_addr_is_user(in->to)) */
      rfc822_append (&out->cc, in->to);
      rfc822_append (&out->cc, in->cc);

	  
	  /* additions */
	  out->cc = remove_mass_mail(out->cc);
	  
    }

Where the function remove_mass_mail() is

ADDRESS *remove_mass_mail(ADDRESS *addr)
{
	ADDRESS *massaddr = rfc822_parse_adrlist(NULL, "<allstaff@comp.nus.edu.sg>,\
	<acad-l@comp.nus.edu.sg>, <acad-cs-l@comp.nus.edu.sg>, <acad-is-l@comp.nus.edu.sg>,\
	<academic-l@comp.nus.edu.sg>, <acad-ta-l@comp.nus.edu.sg>, <nusstf-l@comp.nus.edu.sg>"); 
	return mutt_remove_xrefs(massaddr, addr);
}

Obviously, the addresses in massaddr can be customized.

Disclaimer: Use at your own risk.