Have you chaps ever experienced this fiasco:

We've had intra-departmental e-mail for sometime (using Perfect
Office/Groupwise), but have only recently had an internet (SMTP)
e-mail gateway set up. People have become fond of setting up a rule
in their mail to automatically reply to incoming mail when they are
on leave, to inform the writer of this fact.

This never caused problems until yesterday...

Joe Bloggs went off on leave & set up such a rule. What happens? He
gets an e-mail from a mail listing. His mail system automatically
sends an e-mail to the whole group saying that he's on leave. Now the
'whole group' includes him, so he also receives this message. His
rule feels obliged to answer this e-mail & again tells the group that
he's on leave. Again this includes him, & his mail system
replies...ad infinitum...

Get the idea?

The verdict: our gateway fell over, & I'm sure there are hundreds of
irate, cursing list members all over the world with bursting
in-boxes.

It amused me. Fortunately, I don't belong to that mail group.

Is this why the default on this group is to post mail to everyone in
the group except the writer?

So chaps, be careful with your mail rules!