Our moderators have been complaining that extra notifications get sent out for very minor edits, merges and moves to posts. This is exacerbated by the way we started out using our forum which was to turn on email sending of all notifications for all of our 50+ staff using our forum. This means that, for example, when a post is moved to another topic an email is sent out to 50+ people because it is a new reply to that topic. We know they will start getting too much email and are starting to encourage them to change their notification preferences, but in the meantime this is a real issue for us. The feature I am looking for is some sort of “this is a minor change” tickbox like dokuwiki has or a “do not send notifications” tickbox that is only available when doing post moves or merges. Continuing the discussion from Minor editing should not bump the topic: [image]Minor editing should not bump the topic How about a “this is a minor change” tickbox, like in dokuwiki? https://www.dokuwiki.org/_media/editwindow.png

[image] codinghorror: I guess if you are doing some kind of spring cleaning with merging and splitting, do that before turning on the email notifications for everyone? This makes some sense. So as admin I can go in and deselect “disable emails” and it will not send any messages while I do the spring cleaning? Or moderators, in pinch, can ask me to disable emails before they merge or split a post? Cumbersome, but ok.

[image] codinghorror: only topic merges and splits will – as merges and splits result in posted notifications so you can find your way to the merge or split. Is that actually necessary? We merged some old topics regarding meeting planning, and the notifications that went out caused someone to add something to this week’s meeting agenda that was several months old because they assumed the notification was from something current – it looked like it was a new reply. Or maybe add something that describes what’s really happening, rather than making the email notifications look like a new post/reply?

[image] downey: Or maybe add something that describes what’s really happening, rather than making the email notifications look like a new post/reply? I’ve had that thought too - when you rely on the site for notifications, you can always see what it’s about. When you rely on email, you just get posts that look new which is a bit confusing.

[image] codinghorror: Changing the category won’t generate an email, only topic merges and splits will – as merges and splits result in posted notifications so you can find your way to the merge or split. If this is meant to imply that moving topics will trigger neither emails nor new topic notifications, then this information is outdated. I just moved an old release announcement into the announcement topic (which users are watching by default) and it looks like people were notified (at least I received a notification). So I immediately moved the topic back out of the announcements category, hoping that I would prevent emails from being sent out, but it didn’t, even though the emails were sent about 10 minutes after I had moved the topic back again (I just checked the exact times: topic moved out of announcement category: 11:12, user_watching_first_post email sent: 11:26). Is this supposed to happen? In any case, I’d like to raise this old question again: is there anyway of moving topics into a different category without triggering notifications? Perhaps there could be a setting for “don’t notify new topics inactive for more than than … days”? That way you could move around old (in my case: imported) topics without people getting irrelevant notifications.

My understanding is that when you use the bulk update modal via the admin wrench on topic lists, it does not send notifications. Don’t take my word for it though and test it out.

[image] tobiaseigen: when you use the bulk update modal via the admin wrench on topic lists Ah! So you’re saying that it works differently when you move a topic via that method than when you move it by editing the title of the individual topic?

There definitely are differences between bulk actions and normal edits. Last time I checked, bulk actions allowed you to edit tags without recording an edit :pencil2: to the first post.

This is the topic I am referring to. My assumption is that notifications won’t be sent just like they won’t be bumped. But I may be wrong. https://meta.discourse.org/t/bulk-move-many-topics-from-one-category-to-another/38704/4?u=tobiaseigen

Okay, I tried it and can confirm that bulk moving topics to a different category that is being first-post-watched by a user, does not trigger notifications for that user. Just to be clear: the emphasis is on bulk. Moving topics the “normal way” does trigger notifications. I have not tried it with tags, but would assume that the same logic applies. [image] tobiaseigen: But I may be wrong No, it looks like you are right. Thanks for clarifying. Edit: Sorry, this isn’t over yet. I just saw that at least one user did in fact receive an email for one of the two topics I bulk moved. But I didn’t. I can’t make any sense of it right now, especially since that user only was notified about one of the teo topics. Possibly it has something to do with either having previously been notified about some of the topics or having already read them, though, in my case this only applies to one of the two topics. In addition, I noticed that one of our mods recently moved another topic into the same category (and I’m pretty sure he didn’t use bulk move, but will ask him) and nobody was notified at all.

I’m seeing “new topic” and “new reply” notifications every time I move topics across categories using the bulk option, for users who have the target category set to “Watching” or “Watch first post.” An option to avoid notifications for category changes would be appreciated.

Any way to prevent notifications for post merges, moves?

Product Support

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) May 20, 2020, 3:49am 17

You could disable all outgoing emails via site settings, do the operation, then re-enable outgoing emails.

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Provide option to disable notifications when post moved, renamed, tagged Feature	6	2029	May 3, 2022
Add a site setting to disable notifications on category changes Feature	0	917	September 30, 2020
Bulk editing topic categories should not trigger thousands of email notifications Feature completed , bulk-actions	12	1725	July 30, 2025
Ability to move topics to new categories and suppress notifications Feature	9	530	November 21, 2025
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Any way to prevent notifications for post merges, moves?

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