If I report an issue, then I get all the emails:

[JIRA] Created: (EXT-4) foo
[JIRA] Updated: (EXT-4) foo
[JIRA] New comment: (EXT-4) foo
[JIRA] Closed: (EXT-4) foo

etc...

I thought at first this was an interface issue. On the interface it says that I'm not watching the issue. So why do I get the updates? I thought to maybe toggle the watch. But even if I click this on and off, I still get the emails. So this must be because I'm the Reporter of the issue, right?

a few things:
It's somewhat confusing to see on the UI that I'm not 'watching' an issue, but I still get emails. From this I figure that by 'watching' you must mean 'other interested 3rd parties besides the reporter and assigned developer (and project lead?)'. I suppose the list of people to email updates to is a combination of the watch list, plus whatever hardcoded values are in the com.atlassian.jira.event.listeners.mail.MailListener.

second, as unlikely as it seems, can this be changed to allow anyone to choose to receive updates or not, on an issue by issue basis, including the reporter? I'm not sure of the architecture, I haven't examined the code. But if it's like I think it is.. removing the hardcoded values, and simply making these people 'watchers' would allow for this customized feedback, and would fix the UI confusion as well.