Comment 45 for bug 956618

How does such an obvious bug get filed and debated for year (2013), after year (2012), after year (2011), after year (2010), after year (2009), after year (2008), after year (2007), after year (2006)... but never actually fixed?

This worked in Thunderbird 2, which means it's a regression bug, not an enhancement. There has been ample evidence that this seemingly-minor issue is a major source of frustration to many users, even to the point of abandoning Thunderbird entirely. It may be a little thing, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

Instead of debating the best algorithm for years, why not at least add a special-case check for an exact match of a unique nickname, before going into the current algorithm? That would satisfy the critical use case, making most of the frustrated users happy. A special-case should be trivial to add, for anyone who knows the code, so why hasn't that much been done after nearly 8 years of this ticket being marked as NEW?