[filmor]

Overfull mailboxes can be problematic even with a wildcard `receive` and can happen if some branch of the control flow is slower than expected. We have some places in our code that essentially do manual mailbox handling by merging similar messages and keeping them in the process state until it's ready to actually handle them.

[lostcolony]

Right, but I wouldn't characterize that as problematic messages...rather problematic handling, or systemic issues with load. I.e., my fix does not change the format of the messages. Semantics, perhaps, but a difference between "this design decision of Erlang's caused me problems" and "this architectural/design decision of mine caused me problems"