I was very disappointed when Discourse stopped supporting encrypted messaging. We were using it like a lot.
Thanks for the hint.
When considering setting up an email-less Discourse instance, there is no way to get hit by spam.
When I say “email-less”, I really mean that in the absolute meaning. It’s not that difficult, most of it already exists in Discourse: you can just turn off sending out any emails completely. The only two missing bits are:
- Initial setup for the first admin account, which weirdly requires an email.
- New user signup.
I advocate for a single global switch such as “Email-less Discourse”, which will disable email and make it unnecessary throughout the application.
If the user installs the Discourse app, he’ll get all the updates through it, no need for an email.
If ther user uses a keypass, no need for an email either.
If no digest emails are sent, no need to verify emails.
Frantly, no need to have any email associated with an account at all.
I may sound a bit overwhelming, but in the same time, it is a) not that difficult to complete the remaining/missing 5% that hard-require email, and b) in my practice, it’s a legit case to have a email-less community, and it’s not very unique of an idea - in multiple web shops you can already “buy anonymously”, i.e. you can interact with the platform and even place an order without ever revealing your email. 4chat is yet another example that requires no user email but is huge.
I guess all that’s missing is the will of the Discourse team to embrace the idea and complete a few tweaks to make Discourse truly email-less capable. It’s almost there already.