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As a subscriber to a number of high volume mailing lists, I use mutt, a text-based email client for quickly reading and processing the hundreds of emails that I receive weekly.

Since I signed up to receive weekly jobs email alerts, I've noticed that the plain text versions of the email messages are very badly formatted:

To: [email protected]
Subject: This week's top job matches




    Notification

















        Hi there,


            We found new job matches for you! We've cooked up these matches based on your location and interests. To improve your matches, you can update your preferences at any time.






                        Production Engineer





                        Facebook

This is exactly how the plain text/plain part of the email Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" is formatted and is not a result of the mail client attempting to convert HTML mail to plain text.

I presume the same mailing software is used for non-jobs related notification emails as I found this related – and unresolved – meta question: Plain text email is awful and unreadable

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  • I'm curious how this isn't a dupe?
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jun 12, 2017 at 21:44
  • Before posting this question, I tried searching for a similar already posted question but all my search terms included the word "jobs" so the related question didn't show up. It was only after I had typed my question in my editor and pasted it in to the text box did the related link show up in the Similar Questions box that appears on the right hand side. Once I saw the related question, I figured both issues most likely had the same root cause but since I’d already typed the question, I figured I may as well post it.
    – Anthony Geoghegan
    Commented Jun 12, 2017 at 22:46
  • 1
    Also, not to denigrate the excellent work that Stack Overflow (the company) does, I’ve noticed a pattern where bugs reported on Meta can go on the back-burner after a certain amount of time has passed. Unlike questions on the main sites or other meta questions, bug reports can really only be answered by Stack Overflow staff. Unfortunately, it seems to be the case that a new post gets more attention than one more upvote for on an old unanswered (open) bug report.
    – Anthony Geoghegan
    Commented Jun 12, 2017 at 22:58
  • So you willfully posted a dupe instead of offering a bounty. Okay
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jun 12, 2017 at 23:20
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    I didn't even think of that possibility (offer a bounty) and didn't know it was possible on Meta. I'll know better next time.
    – Anthony Geoghegan
    Commented Jun 12, 2017 at 23:22
  • 2
    Hm, looks like it isn't ^_^ Some ideas here, though.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jun 12, 2017 at 23:23

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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We're currently in the middle of moving to a new email platform which means a bunch of things about email will be tidied up in the next couple of weeks. One of those things is a consistent template and text support. So, we're working on it and we're hoping to have everything tested and ready by the beginning of next month.

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  • 10
    What's the new (an old) platform are you using?
    – Veve
    Commented Jun 12, 2017 at 16:02
  • mailchimp. runs away
    – Félix Adriyel Gagnon-Grenier
    Commented Jun 12, 2017 at 19:36
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    @Veve old is literally just rendering in-app and sending via our SMTP relay. New is a new app that handles send quotas, subscriptions and other email fun. It is generally agnostic of the underlying platform. We're using SendGrid as the underlying platform right now.
    – Dean Ward
    Commented Jun 12, 2017 at 19:48
  • Thanks for the response and details Dean!
    – Veve
    Commented Jun 13, 2017 at 7:11

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